Archive of Our Own

[7:23PM]
Somehow, Jabber had ended up in the stone quarry again. He’d never had a good sense of direction.

At times there were stretches in his head where the tide went out, the wind died, and the sun pounded down mercilessly. Everything looked normal on the surface, but he could feel how underneath, the entire world had dried up in sad pits and lumps, crusty shells in the sand, dry salt in his nose. The water went still. Zodyl sent him to steal things from no one. He assassinated targets who were like smudges on a lens, and Mankira’s retraction couldn’t even fish up a good fight. Failing that, he’d resort to keeping the poor thing sheathed entirely.

Never granted any lasting satisfaction- the beating was all well and good, but to fight without Mankira was to fight in a half. His body felt pain. His brain remained dry and cracked, begging to be picked at.

When battles failed, he looked for new toxins. Tori’s fire season was ending, but the new growths on the walls had failed to show as of yet.

Where new toxins failed, he resorted to things he couldn’t yet tolerate. His body was his own lengthy written prescription, a flesh record of everything Mankira had ever taken in, with all symptoms and dosages scrawled into the applicable body parts. He had no true need of the notes that Zodyl made him take. Before his invitation to the Raiders, he had always used his nose and muscle memory- rather, the memory of whatever organs might be concerned.

[12:34PM]

Like how he knew Zanka was…

He turned to stare at the source of the smell, eyebrows furrowed.

If he could not war with Givers or poison, his body was the next logical step. Uncounted days without sleep were finally doing the job for him, because that was a pine tree.

Why was there a pine tree in the stone quarry?

He wasn’t in the stone quarry, he was on the main road with a stick in his hand. Sniffing it, he figured it was pine. He pressed it to his mouth absently.

For the two weeks passing, a cycle without good battles or new toxins turned round and Jabber prescribed himself the Circles. Neurotoxins existed to treat pain beyond what he could force movement through, severing his mind from his body to render it numb and tingling. The Circles, while he was convinced that they were some form of poison, originated from Jabber. When his brain teetered on going numb, the Circles were necessary.

The rip current was a constant, but when it couldn’t pull anything worthwhile, the Circles started him with a retracted battle, a fully sheathed battle, new toxins, unresisted toxins, and if still bored, he would restart. Zodyl sending him on missions was all well and good, but a worthwhile fight was not guaranteed. He got bad batches of opponents who couldn’t even defeat a retracted Mankira. They couldn’t beat Jabber when he sheathed her entirely. Guns were only fun if they had half decent aim.

New toxins, couldn’t find anything new.

Toxins that he couldn’t quite tolerate were not locking his limbs or burning in the way he needed.

From the top:

Bad batches of opponents who couldn’t even defeat a retracted Mankira. They couldn’t beat Jabber when he sheathed her entirely. Guns were only fun when he didn’t know they were there.

New toxins, couldn’t find anything new.

Toxins he was not tolerant to, not quite locking his limbs or burning in the way he needed.

From the top:

Bad batches of opponents who couldn’t even defeat a retracted Mankira, they couldn’t beat Jabber when he sheathed her entirely, guns were only fun when they could hit him, new toxins, couldn’t find anything new, toxins he was not tolerant to, not working, nothing was working-

Humming while his nails shredded his thumb’s pad, grin fixed on his face, Jabber ground his teeth against the fibers of water edil’s root. It failed to even close his throat. Third time, same poison, same result. If all went correctly, a decent fight had to come.

A challenge, he needed a challenge. Could find Zanka, but then he needed to make the choker call, then wait for Zanka to pick up, then play along with that odd pantomime where Zanka wanted to fight and fuck, but then he didn’t want to, the dog at the yard door dance, ‘Wanna go out, wanna come in-’

Could attack the Cleaners directly, track him down. They did travel in packs, which could be fun- only, Zodyl had ordered him not to provoke the pack at the moment because Zodyl needed time to work on something. Jabber would get into trouble. Punishment was one thing, trouble was another.

Zanka had gotten pissed at him recently, something regarding sleeping or how long it’d been…

What was Jabber’s longest period awake? He had never kept track, but with his last instance of avoiding sleep, he had felt deliciously awful. For the purposes of breaking up the monotony, he could at least test the effectiveness of toxins that had the additional benefit of zapping his mind awake. See if anything in particular was most effective-

Day 1: White speckled rat snake had the bonus of making his entire left arm hurt. Zodyl informed him of a backlog of information that needed interrogations, too dangerous for Momoa.

Water edil’s root still didn’t close his throat and he chewed it up for the fourth time, grainy mud from the bog he’d yanked it out of crunching in his molars.

Day 2: Unnamed root, white speckled, yellow stripes down the end, found growing in the Southern stone quarry filled in by rain. His mind felt electrocuted and he couldn’t feel his left foot from the ankle downwards or his right pinkie from the knuckle. Found interrogation subjects.

Day 3: Seeds of a tree he did not know the name of, covered in a soft, wool like substance, from Tori. He vomited twice. Mankira had gained nothing new, but that didn’t surprise him because he knew the same component to be in rat poison. Jabber dragged back whoever snitched on Zodyl’s people in the South, but didn’t recall what he’d done afterwards.

Somehow, blood got under Mankira. Over her, next to her, under his fingernails was alright, but underneath Mankira-

He wasn’t sure how he knew. In the same way that he knew Zodyl and Rudo smelled like each other, by the same law that dictated he needed to fight for as long as movement was capable, blood was alright most everywhere, but under Mankira-

He’d apparently been supposed to interrogate further, but instead he screwed up and got into trouble.

Day 4: Pin scorpion. His neck hurt. On a job, he’d spotted Cleaners and, swaying with impatient restraint, hovered back to watch the blond one with the long hair, the burned eye, and the lip piercing. Very strange, indeed.

Day 7?: … He had consumed something, made his heart rate rise, the back of his neck lock up, and he was then capable of walking in something approaching a straight line.

To be frank, Jabber felt bizarre, even taking his baseline into account. Odd, but good.

[4:30PM]

Zodyl was watching him from the corner of his eye. Striding up, Jabber hopped onto the back of his chair, “Did I catch up with the backlog?” He kept going without an answer, “No new information on the series- but I watched the Cleaners, I didn’t even pick a fight, didn’t I do well? But I’m telling you, there’s something off about that guy who uses the strings! He smells like, like-” He shook his head. His eyeballs lagged a second behind the sockets, “Opposite of Rudo! Strong, though, very strong, but I need to fight him to figure something out. Can I?! If I dig up good information, can we tussle?”

“Not immediately.”

“Come on!” He stepped onto the armrest and crouched, shoving himself into Zodyl’s view, “Whatever it is, it’s huge. You’ll be happy to know it, boss, if you wait on this you’re gonna wish you knew sooner!”

“I trust your judgement.” Zodyl’s stare brooked no argument, “I need you functional.”

“How are you gonna look at me and say this isn’t functional?!”

“A full scale attack on the Cleaners will not currently g-”

Jabber blinked.

[6:58PM]

“-ave me all that shit for not throwin’ everything I had at’cha when I was pullin’ from negative zero with a side’a zip?!”

He was on the ground and the side of his head had a lovely line burning through it. The pine smell wasn’t coming from a tree anymore. Zanka?

That Kamuatari dialect was dumped all over the place, occasionally to the point where Jabber couldn’t make out the smaller words between words. Unimportant, as the sound all together said he was pissed. Jabber perked up.

Pushing himself to sit, he rubbed the side of his head absently, “Did I call you?”

Zanka looked at him, incredulous, “I- rub it in, why don’t’cha.” He tapped Assistaff against the ground, “Look, either way you showed up. Get’cher head in the game.”

Jabber got up, shaking his head again, “Yeah, yeah, I heard you, y’need me functional.”

Zanka tilted his head, “What?”

“Huh?!” He mocked.

Looking around, he could gauge that they were in the stone quarry again. Had he ever left? He stood up, pricking his thigh with Mankira absently. His heart rate increased, his ears started pulsing, but his brain was still having trouble kicking itself into gear. Ordinarily, attacks came to his body before his mind, but Zanka’s progression with Assistaff graced Jabber with the opportunity to actually put his brain to work, though said brain was currently preoccupied with the attempt to fall out of his ear.

He lurched forward, brought Mankira down, took another full bodied swing to the ribs, and toppled over.

“... Either I got faster, or you’re holdin’ out again.”

Jabber giggled sheepishly. Poor form, perhaps, showing up in this state when he always demanded the best from his good boy, “Aw, I just got here!”

Zanka squinted at him. Staggering up, Jabber launched himself, laughing as he took another crack to his hip.

The accuracy of Jabber’s swings and strategies had clearly suffered, but Zanka kept playing with him because he was so indulgent, so nice. For the fifth time, Jabber dragged himself up from the ground. His laughter was now constant, bubbling up in him as he felt the tide coming back in, cold relief- he was fighting with Mankira in full form, the evening air was cool, the smell of pine curled around him, and Zanka was crashing Assistaff’s dull end into the small of his back. His giggles broke into a wheeze before continuing as regularly scheduled.

Her jaws dug into him. He squirmed, still struggling to get up. Finally, he retracted Mankira and wrenched his chest at an angle to yank his shoulder from the socket. Contorting further, he peeled his arm out from under those jaws and summoned her again to swipe at Zanka’s heel. Cursing and jumping back, Zanka backed away from Jabber’s next flurry of loose attacks.

“The fuck are ya made of?!” Zanka darted to the side, ducked, returned to flanking.

“You really wanna know, how’s about I teach you how to take inventory sometime?” Jabber used the opportunity to pop his shoulder back in, “Make this up to you, bad-boy.”

Zanka’s eye twitched. Ducking beneath Mankira’s horizontal swipe, he snatched Jabber’s forearm in the followthrough and yanked him to expose his back. Assistaff’s dull end drove into him like a stake hammered into the ground. The hits were in rapid succession, more appropriate for a passionate stabbing than bo techniques, once into his hip, twice into the small of his back, and Zanka just seemed to keep going on the ribs until he liked the number. For good measure, he kneed Jabber in the same spot.

The beating sent Jabber crashing to the ground on his side, entire body quaking with the force of his laughter.

“... Jabber?”

His head felt like a rag that’d been lit on fire and put out with filthy mop water. Entire body rinsing out from underneath his nerve endings, he thrashed up by his elbows, tried to put weight on his knee, and fell to the tune of it buckling.

He didn’t know how long they were fighting, but his muscles, fibers tattered to a frayed yarn, were not contracting at his mind’s call. The thighs in particular. His neurotoxin numbed feeling, but carried no restorative properties.

From the top, he pushed up on his palms, fell, rose to his knees and managed to get a foot under him.

From the top, he dragged himself upright, swaying.

Zanka was looking at him like a beachgoer who’d stumbled on a mauled sea bird, flapping along with one wing, ribs heaving, mouth gaping, shrieking and pecking away any attempts to assist. The revulsion, the clear inability to look away- Jabber whooped and swung with Mankira, his wing of poisoned steel. Downed again, bliss. His breath sounded and felt more akin to a fit of dry heaving. Blood in his mouth. He coughed, dragged Mankira through his side.

“Jabber-”

He cast himself up to be pummeled down, while his body was capable of movement. Every drop of worth was to be rung out of it, as the function of a body was to amuse its user with the songs it sang and he would play it until the strings snapped because he needed this song to go over and over, last forever.

“Hey, just-”

As long as he could stand, he would. As long as he could attack-

Crashing into Zanka, his mind dragged down in the surf, he clutched a forearm while Mankira retracted.

“... What did you do.” Zanka hissed.

For Jabber’s part, he couldn’t tell if his ribs felt tight from heaving or if arms were around him.

Laughter was falling out of him onto the ground. The way his throat felt loose and tight at the same time intrigued him, “So embarr’ssing, knockin’ out this way- sorry, just-” Wonderfully humiliating, but his brain was leaning to the left, then to the right, he was having a hard time appreciating it on account of-

His head drooped over, “I keep telling you, you’ve got homework- do whatever you want, anything, I owe you-”

On the way out of the waking world, he tried to bite Zanka’s neck as a goodbye present, but missed in his collapse and got his uniform’s shoulder. That was well enough. Assistaff rested on his shoulder so often, and Jabber happily took the faint taste of pine for his sendoff.

At that point, his body had quite enough of his consciousness overstaying its welcome. It threw him out on his ear and let the door hit him on the way out.

***

Zanka Nijiku had a day full of overtime, a mind full of confusion, and two arms full of Jabber Wonger. Who had fallen asleep midfight. While Zanka understood that concern was the appropriate reaction and he wasn’t necessarily lacking in it, he also could not help feeling mildly affronted.

He huffed, letting himself stare hard at Jabber’s face. Out of habit, he ran his thumb over the circle under Jabber’s eye, wondering at how awful he looked, “Who told ya to conk out on me, ya little shit?”

Wrapping an arm around his waist, Zanka hoisted him over his shoulder with a grunt. Based on his impression of Cthoni, and, unhappily, Zodyl, he had been suspecting that while being Jabber’s enemy frequently involved being a bloody mess on the floor, being part of his personal circle involved a lot of picking Jabber up off that same floor. Sitting on the bizarre border between those two, Zanka got his fair share of both. He might have begrudged a lack of compensation for utilizing two skill sets, if he could claim that he wasn’t getting compensated. Frequently, rigorously compensated.

Starting his walk to the car, he tried not to think too hard about how light Jabber was in contrast to how hard the man hit. Admittedly, Jabber was full of contradictions. He was typically amiable, albeit excitable, when he wasn’t shrieking for beatings like a banshee or shunning the world at large for the insult of not being a threat to him. An encyclopedia of toxins in the Ground, but he refused to know their names. He wanted fights to last as long as possible, but he carried poison that paralyzed most enemies in the same instant that Jabber got a claw in him.

Physically, Zanka noticed, Jabber was the same. Light, yet nightmarishly durable. His normal slouching posture gave the impression that he’d been unwillingly saddled with a body and only lugged it around by obligation, but his attack patterns and sense of balance were downright unearthly.

When, Zanka noted bitterly, he wasn’t quite literally falling all over himself.

A vague irritation had been crackling up his arms as they’d swung at each other, the buzzing knowledge that Jabber was faster than this, more precise than this. Perhaps a result of Jabber’s standards bleeding into him, but the thought rang untrue, too much like the excuses that Zanka despised.

Truthfully, a similar feeling had come over him in the early stages of puzzling out 3R’s function. Rudo’s potential pissed Zanka off when he made good on it, but the idea of failing that potential created double the irritation. He’d experienced it again in the moment where he’d believed that Jabber had been defeated by flipping the earth, and then while ruminating on Rudo’s sole focus on revenge. Zanka bristled at the notion that he didn’t conquer the genius at the peak of their precious talent. Hell, he had to exert his potential to the farthest he could push it. The idea that they might shirk their advantage deliberately, when Zanka had to pull from reserves that he didn’t even-

Anyhow, he had been annoyed at Jabber from the moment he’d noticed. Now, the bastard was asleep on him.

His thumb dragged into the bone of his hip without thinking. He’d parked a decent way away from the quarry, having sent his support home after their mission.

Fresh off of weathering attacks from a pack of Trash Beasts in the form of massive hounds, Zanka had needed to dodge bullets as three syndicates, concluding the four month long period of iron canid terror, celebrated with an immediate attempt at reestablishing their dominance with Zanka’s team in the crossfire.

He hadn’t been frustrated with work.

In the two weeks that had passed before Zanka snapped and called Jabber, cleaning assignments kept him from dwelling too much. He had started getting frequent cases where human ambush was a particularly high risk. Specific types of missions seemed to come in waves- contested territory had been the current theme, and though notoriously tricky, Zanka found himself falling into a rhythm with uncanny speed.

Riyo and Tamsy had been the typical measures. Cleaners with notable advantages against human targets were considered somewhat specialized, and often delegated to handling difficult beasts with the complication of a densely populated, contested territory. Evacuation was not always an option, especially in contested zones.

Semiu, an odd scrutiny in her eye, informed Zanka that he was considered to share Riyo and Tamsy’s area of specialty per last evaluation. He had stared at the table in front of him, distantly dreading what she saw.

His salary rose. As did his number of working hours.

Technically, the Hell Guard was supposed to serve as backup for human complications, but the spoken word was “supposed to,” the subtitle was “if we have the people,” and the dinner table discussion that Zanka grew up hearing included, “-and there’s a town that needs its census shortened, I hope they drop a few tons of sentient metal there, maybe it’ll land on someone in the wanted list-”

Zanka didn’t shy away from informing Rudo the reason for their lack of appropriate backup, even as Tamsy informed him that there were phrases more delicate than, “They don’t give a rat’s ass.”

Cleaners swept up that mess, per usual. He had not been frustrated at the work itself.

Still, not enough by any strength of the imagination, he’d tried to push himself and almost brought a damned wall down. Covering the backs of Supporters during their retreat, he had darted for a structural support column and almost collapsed the roof on a faction that’d grazed Gris and Tomme. Last second, he’d abruptly realized that a lot of people would not survive what he was about to do. Enjin’s face flickered in his mind. A bullet barely missed him as he pulled up short.

Hell, no one who swung to cut down a tree was happy to find they were striking a reed. Even his ego couldn’t delude him into believing that he’d plateaued. The rotting taste of his last period of stagnation lingered sour in his throat.

Thus, after sending his support home, Zanka had stopped on the side of the road, thought for a while, and came to the conclusion that he wouldn’t call. Ten minutes later, he was staring at his choker.

He had absolutely not been frustrated at the work.

However, he was intimately aware of how he had not swung full force once throughout the entire mission. Bound to get rusty. Conversely, chances of beating Jabber went up and down. Strings of wins, strings of retreating forfeits that were losses in spirit, and sometimes (though more infrequent) a true loss where Jabber tested new poisons on them both.

Zanka had sworn off seeing him after their last fight.

At least, sworn off calling first. Bare minimum, Jabber needed to grow some inkling of how their last brawl’s horseshit wasn’t something to encourage. Zanka had timed out his stamina while flanking- Jabber downed him with a roundhouse kick and his wind was knocked out at the angle he’d landed. Instead of triumph, Jabber’s posture sagged over in frustration. Trotting over to Zanka, sprawled on his back while frantically fighting his diaphragm for air, Jabber had crouched and leaned above with his eyes half lidded and eyebrows raised.

“C’mon.” Tone dry, he had tsk’d as if met with a malfunction in an otherwise reliable household appliance. Spite made him quiet, Zanka had furiously recalled. Cackling and screeching in battle, sullen and snippy when his claws did not meet appropriate resistance.

Mankira’s prick felt more like the swat of an insistent cat. Opposite the dreaded paralysis, Zanka’s mind had been snatched by the proverbial scruff and ripped back to alertness. His wounds numbed, his neck hurt, and his hands shook, the entire world blazing as if thrown under a magnifying glass catching the midday sun.

Whatever he’d been dosed with led to a second round going for an hour and a half without a break or water. The aftermath left them both in shambles, and Zanka hadn’t been able to sleep for twenty four hours plus change, leaving him reeling at how Jabber pulled shit like that on a regular basis. As retribution for needing to call in late to work for the first time since he’d signed on, Zanka had silently sworn to never see, or at least call, Jabber again.

Two weeks later, unable to quell his restlessness after the assignment on contested ground, Zanka had grit his teeth and tapped at his choker.

No response. It had felt like stepping forward with anticipation of level ground, only to meet the sudden drop of a curb. Reflexive indignance kicked in him.

Even when Zanka had first downed him, once wasn’t enough, once could be chance. Over and over again, it was all a coin toss until every flip landed heads. Two people total had that claim of certainty. One of them was so terrified of wielding the strength required for the feat that he divorced himself from that power entirely. The other cheated using a Watchman, the only worthwhile thing in those dead eyes that Jabber imagined something alive in.

Zanka, just to reach the cusp of breaking an even score, had ripped drills out of ragged muscle fibers, spent all nighters poring over strategy, weathered Jabber’s poisonings where he fell short-

The point was, he had sunk a great deal more effort into pummelling Jabber than Mr. Action Figure and the Watchman, which- as talented as Zanka resented Rudo for being- was a massive cheat and everyone knew it. The least Jabber could do was answer his damn collar. For some reason, Zanka had always run under the bizarre assumption that if he did take the initiative, Jabber would answer.

… He’d tapped the choker again.

“Hello-hello!”

He exhaled, refusing to think about why, “... Hey.”

“Zanka! You call twice?! Was talking to the bossman!”

He rubbed between his eyes, “Yeah, well. I feel rusty.”

“Oh no!”

He opened his mouth to ask, closed his mouth, then grumbled, “... We’re sparin’.”

“Sure thing, sure thing-”

Zanka’s eyebrows furrowed. Something felt off. There was a distant note to Jabber’s voice, and he vaguely wondered if anything new had turned up in Tori, “Usual place? I can do tomorrow.” He paused, then hissed, “And you’re not dosin’ me with any more of that horseshit from last time.”

There was a sound like the scratching of metal on stone, “Listen, it’s good you called, I’m glad, I was actually thinking of you-”

He ignored any sensation of a fist unclenching in his chest.

“-’Cause this involves you too, now I think of it? You gotta find the strings, they aren’t all there, more where that came from, it’s just hidden somewhere and you need to be on the lookout for all the thread-”

“Jabber, wh-”

“That spool’s a date with doom’s day, man, I told you, I have a nose for this stuff, like I could smell how you could beat the shit out of me?!”

“You were wrong that ti-”

“Or how Rudo’s just like the coat- um, listen, I can smell it, you have a huge spider in him! Would it kick up any dust if I fight him?! Just to know, I have to know.”

In the present, he grunted as he pulled himself and Jabber over the lip of the quarry, absently running a hand over Jabber’s spine. He wondered what toxin caused the fall into that delirium. Aside from the venomenal hallucinogen, there were the seeds of that blue flower, then a mold Jabber found- Zanka couldn’t recall all of them yet, but he was developing decent intuition in regards to what Jabber’s claws had stocked up on.

… However.

What a terrible word, ‘however.’ Zanka, born into pettiness and raised into strategy, kept a long, spiteful list of every advantage that had ever been held over him. For each second spent trying to make himself disregard the rambling, his knowledge of Jabber’s uncanny instinct knocked at his mind like a wasp against a window pane. Only most of those screws were loose. All that did was heighten the danger when people missed the few screws tight enough to hold that entire terrifying structure together.

He was going on about a spool, strings, there was no way he was referring to-

Zanka shook his head, sped his pace across the crunching rocks. Best wait until Jabber was at least coherent. After all, his conviction that Zanka could defeat him didn’t count, since no such ‘potential’ existed prior. Zanka needed to be violently uprooted, to graft on himself, then relentlessly cultivate on that bare bones foundation that had failed them both.

He resentfully acknowledged that it had worked. Though his uprooting was a painful thing, he had undeniably grown stronger in his poisoned patch of earth.

Piling Jabber into the back seat of the car, he wrestled out a cheap grey throw blanket he’d folded up and hidden, in the event that neither of them could wait. Laying him out over it, Zanka made to fold the other half over him.

He hesitated. Thought again of his uprooting, and treacherously, recalled a frequent offer. Demand, rather. Jabber had been telling Zanka to continue while he was unconscious for months now.

He stared down at Jabber, stretched across the black fabric on the back seat. Head tilted to the side, lips slightly open. Zanka found himself trying to memorize the sight. There were weeks on end where he blinked in the dark hours of the Sunday AM to the sound of Jabber pacing the room. Sometimes, he was deliberately woken up in the middle of the night. Jabber was strangely scrupulous in his own species of etiquette- names, greetings, who he addressed directly, refusal to tell lies- Zanka was getting better at picking them up, and he’d noted the insistence on goodbyes where possible.

“Gonna go for a walk.” That goodbye might turn into kissing Zanka’s calloused palm on a whim. Afterwards, Jabber would bite his thumb so hard that it’d take a series of palm strikes to the ear and a knee to his diaphragm to pry him off.

Wide awake by then, Zanka generally wrestled between Jabber’s legs for the trouble.

At other points, though, the goodbye was honest. Caught in some impulse, an odd light in his eye, Jabber would thank him for the night then bolt off as if he were under a spell. After a few cycles of that, the weeks came where he was nigh impossible to rouse once Zanka tired him out. Two days in bed, blurrily awake, barely coherent. If the Raiders called for him, Mankira pushed toxins into his bloodstream to drag him up, but traces of the fog remained.

Zanka didn’t think he’d ever approached the point where his combat skills were impacted to this degree.

The other half of the blanket fell to the side. Zanka, resigned to himself, crawled above him.

Working Jabber over until he overloaded with pain and settled was a hideous ego trip in and of itself, but seeing him pliant from the start was another game entirely. The shameful wish to be exceptional in some manner had never quite been snuffed in Zanka, and that piece wanted to believe that Jabber’s docility was unique to him.

Zanka leaned down, ran hands up his sides, lips to his neck. Wanting to be gentle, wanting to draw blood, he bit ferociously then licked over the patch. Slowly, he started hooking his fingers into the seam of Jabber’s top. He wanted to get to a motel, somewhere with a bed, more for the sake of space and a shower than anything. Thus, his lips stopped at Jabber’s midline scar. Back to his neck, up to the corner of his eye. There was one of the constant, small patches of evidence of what Jabber did to himself on a regular basis.

Impulsively, Zanka kissed the circle beneath his eye and let his lips rest there a while. Poisoning, murder, kidnapping, Zanka knew Jabber to be capable of all of it. When calm, though, it was dangerously easy to zero in on how Mankira’s intake process required Jabber to poison himself.

Trailing down, he risked kissing him on the mouth without any teeth, because Jabber wasn’t awake to mock him. Zanka had truthfully not gotten the motions down. He felt a sour sensation rise in him at how some just understood the ‘technique.’ Semiu, with enough drinks, talked about her ex, “a good kisser,” she’d said. Zanka had frequently caught himself wondering what the hell a ‘good kisser’ was supposed to be. Certainly not him, who preferred chewing Jabber to tatters and didn’t know how to do anything else.

Jabber had pecked him on the mouth in the past. When he was trying to get Zanka to do something he shouldn’t, his lips trailed down the shell of his ear until Zanka could feel his pulse in it. Another area through which Jabber seemed to swim naturally, where Zanka was doomed to a graceless learning period.

He kissed Jabber again, trying to relax his mouth. After a few moments of waiting for the sensation to become more than lips against lips, the unhappy urge to bite reemerged in his teeth. As much as he’d lectured Amo over loving and killing being able to exist in tandem, he didn’t understand a single part of himself that had managed to root in Jabber, because as he tried to kiss him gently, his fingers locked around his wrists.

Blood trickled from the corner of Jabber’s mouth where Zanka’s teeth wound up buried. Another kiss. Reluctantly, he folded the other half of the grey blanket over. He closed the car door, and slipped into the driver’s seat.

[8:34PM]

Jabber slept in the back of the car while Zanka got keys to a motel. When Zanka pulled him out, he shifted and muttered. Mankira’s index emerged and struck for Jabber’s own thigh. Zanka snarled, grabbing him by the wrist.

“Put her away.”

“Mm, should wake up to play-”

“No, ya shouldn’t. Leave it!”

“Don’t wanna.”

“Tough shit.” Zanka shoved him into the closed door of the motel, Jabber’s wrists in one hand, the key in the other. After a few moments of Zanka juggling a shitty key, a shittier lock, and, shittiest of all, Jabber’s attitude, the hinges swung inward and dropped them both inside like a trapdoor. Zanka kicked it shut behind him.

They ended up on the floor, Jabber pitching up beneath him like a wave. Zanka fought to keep him on his stomach. After a scuffle with several near misses, he wound up knelt with his shins on Jabber’s triceps and his weight resting on the dip of his spine. Jabber’s wrists were above his head and pinned to the floor by Assistaff, who was held sideways in a wide grip while Zanka bore down with full strength. It was one of the mounted positions that Zanka grappled for instantly on entering close quarters. Pinning Jabber was a sprint, as that marathon was a chemically fueled lost cause- he had four holds, give or take, which he considered reliable for the management of both Jabber and Mankira. Even then, he didn’t dare if they were on the unstable surfaces so typical of polluted zones. Pinned or not, one lucky leveraging of those massive blades could and would send them both toppling down hills of old electronics and rebar.

Jabber writhed beneath again. With everything that his body had been put through, one would think his ungodly endurance would have suffered in combat. Perhaps, at baseline, it had. The bottomless bloodlust could be riding solely on his analgesics and stimulants, swimming in the nausea, the pulsing in his throat, the uneven fluttering of his heart. His thrashing stopped sooner than usual, though. Exhaling, Zanka kept his base solid and tried not to think of what that said for the state he was in.

Jabber’s spine was rising and falling in tiny, rapid wheezes underneath Zanka’s groin. Eyes barely cracked open, Jabber slurred, “You’re sick. Can feel you getting off on this.”

Affection bled from his tone.

“I don’t wanna hear it from you, Jabber.” He snapped, resenting how hot shame started beating in him. Particularly when he could tell how Jabber was passively grinding against the floor, “If you come in your pants, I’m not washin’ ‘em again.”

A breathy laugh, “No one makes you do that, man.”

No retort seemed readily available. Zanka scowled and bore his weight down again.

“... You’re always using this position. Boring.”

Zanka sneered, faintly stung despite himself, “Go on then, get out of it if you’re so bored!”

Jabber whined and squirmed, “You’re just gonna sit on me?!”

“Got it in one, genius! I’m sittin’ here ‘til you knock out on me. Again.” He added out of spite.

He was treated to the sight of Jabber’s eyelids falling shut as a feeble cycle started. Jabber’s forehead touched the ground. He went limp for a moment, before his eyes were forced wide and his back pushed up, after which he would thrash until he was wheezing. His forehead would hit the ground. The entire process repeated itself.

“Zanka-” Jabber groaned, finally, “J’st, choke me out or s’mething, this’s ridiculous.”

For no reason that Zanka understood, watching all that made him want to speak softly, “You’re who's ridiculous.”

Eventually, Jabber’s eyes slid shut. For a few minutes, both of them were locked in a stalemate. Jabber continued his weakening struggle, though his eyes started remaining shut all throughout. Mankira slid back into her rings. Pressed down to the ground, wrists squirming under Assistaff, Jabber complained inaudibly and incoherently until he couldn’t even summon the strength to move his mouth. Zanka still waited a few minutes to be sure. Finally, he let Assistaff up, slid off of his back, and, furiously ignoring his erection, turned Jabber over. Though half asleep- three quarters of the way, frankly- Jabber’s eyes still kept trying to crack open. His fingers twitched when Zanka did away with his clothes and folded them on the nightstand. Mankira was left on.

He lugged them both to the bathroom. Sitting on the edge of the tub, he rested Jabber on his lap and set to work on puzzling out the unfamiliar shower knob. Eventually, steam filled the bathroom.

Laying his body under the shower stream once it ran hot, Zanka took care to rest Jabber’s head against the side of the bath and keep his hair out of the water. After falling into that ritual of showering or bathing them, a few instances passed before Jabber earnestly complained and demanded that Zanka quit getting his locs wet if he was unconscious. Automatically, Zanka had marked the tone that Jabber used when he earnestly didn’t like something. Like he had in the Trash Beast, Jabber went quiet when upset, sulking and refusing to look at Zanka while his grievances stalked out in a scornful mumble.

Stark opposite of Zanka’s ungainly anger, snarling out in bared teeth when he failed to hold onto its leash. To add salt to the wound in his pride, Jabber’s anger seemed liquid, only ever taking the form of its container. He threw himself back into a gleeful frenzy as quickly as the wind reentered his sails, while Zanka’s ability to plant a grudge felt like an invasive root that burrowed down from his throat to the soles of his feet.

Unfair, he thought as he wearily rested his forehead against Jabber’s, illogical, contradictory, paradoxical-

His own damp hair chilled while kissing and biting him in turns, unable to make up his mind, unable to feel satisfied if he ended on either note. Reluctantly, he pulled away to bite down Jabber’s neck. His palm was already pressed up against the incision at Jabber’s lower stomach, the nail of his index hooking into the small rise that the scar tissue formed.

Patches of it looked like they were healed over recently. Zanka unhappily dug his teeth into Jabber’s collarbone. He had already deduced that Jabber “took inventory,” as he morbidly referred to it, when all else failed and boredom flooded the basement to his brain, saturating the foundation and collapsing it from under him. Following two consecutive instances of Zanka’s loss or forfeit, he often needed to keep the bath shallow and use a washcloth due to the fresh suture line.

Ridiculous, he thought while winding an arm around Jabber’s waist. He slotted Jabber into his lap, kissing at the top of his sternum where the scar began. Didn’t make any sense, didn’t know when to stop digging at himself, didn’t know how to leave well enough alone and wouldn’t if he did.

The irony was, per usual, lost on him.

Zanka pressed inside of him. Jabber whined in his sleep, thighs tensing. When his mouth fell open, Zanka pushed his thumb inside to feel between his molars without knowing where the urge came from. The impulse almost felt analytical, the way he felt when he greedily drank in every ounce of information about Assistaff that was available.

Knew the bends in her shaft and the lopsided geometry of her jaws, both by the feeling in his hands and by numerical measurements to the third decimal point. Her heartwood streaked in a dark, bluish tint, while the sapwood ran up pale in thin, elusive trails. Those streaks were mapped in his mind by color. He’d counted the number of streaks, examined the faintest discrepancies in hues, he knew exactly which patterns rested under his fingers where he held her. She had seven limb whorls that he also located by memory. Dark patches of freckles told him where the fascicles were, where her needles had once sprouted. He knew when his fingers were resting on any of them. Bandages wrapped around patches of Assistaff’s early wood, which, though still strong, could be scored by a fingernail where pressure was applied. For her late wood, this was no issue.

Her blue tint had been accentuated by the redseed oil that he religiously purchased from the Vianders, one third varnish, two thirds oil, which he had brushed her with in order to assure that she wouldn’t be harmed by water. He had applied three coats, wiping the excess between each, then disposed of the cloth. Two days were set aside for curing once he reapplied the oil, biannually. Once on the day he’d found her, once on the day he was born.

(Rudo had tried collecting his old oiling rags, insisting that they could still be used despite discouragement. Zanka had given a mean "I told you so" when Rudo learned why those rags needed to be either disposed of or stored in water.)

Why he traced those details now, he wasn't sure, but he'd long noted how Jabber’s scar ran over his naval and how individuals who had abdominal surgery, who Zanka knew, had scars which swerved around that spot. Where it ran over his sternum, Zanka had felt small, strange indentations directly up the middle. Six in total. Jabber once complained of how he hadn’t puzzled out how to open himself ‘up there,’ it was ‘locked shut.’

He bit Jabber's neck, furiously. Too often, the line between toxin and medicine balanced solely on the tightrope of ‘overdose.’ Zanka had learned the hard way, courtesy of the jackass underneath him. However, he occasionally harbored an uneasy suspicion that the same was true of Jabber. Breath shuddering out of him as his hips stuttered, he kissed and bit feverishly up the side of Jabber’s neck while his thumb stroked along his molars.

If Jabber were awake, in gleeful provocation, Zanka's finger would be been practically chewed off by now. He traced over the top of the molar, along the sides, noted how Jabber had his wisdom tooth on his upper left jaw, but it was removed on his lower left. His thumb continued to trace down. The upper left lateral incisor was chipped slightly, giving the impression that he had an extra canine tooth. His lower right canine was barely twisted, making it look sharper than it actually was, and giving it a tiny gap between the other teeth.

... The right lower wisdom tooth was still there. Feeling along his gumline, Zanka could tell that it was rescinded, slightly. Eishia always mentioned how that was in relation to aggressive brushing, which Zanka knew because she’d chided him over the same thing.

He swallowed, unsure of anything he was feeling. Pulling his fingers from Jabber’s mouth, he kissed him again, viciously, and increased the speed and force of his thrusts. He intertwined their fingers, then released the grip on Jabber’s left hand to press their palms together- Jabber’s index finger was longer than his ring, his palms weren’t as calloused as Zanka’s but the knuckles under Mankira were. The black gloves that Jabber summoned when he unsheathed her protected the skin on his hands. Out of nowhere, Zanka recalled how when he slept, his fingers curled into loose fists and his hands tucked inward towards his chest.

He pulled away, impulsively kissing down Jabber’s wrist. Hesitating for a moment, he trailed back up, kissed over the side of his thumb, bit the meat of his palm softly. Jabber made a small sound in his sleep, eyebrows knitting.

Cuticles were shredded where Jabber picked at them without realizing, yet his nail polish was never chipped. That polish looked black, but in the right light, iridescent purple flickered through. Zanka intertwined their fingers again. Mankira had the faintest color variations. Right index, middle, ring, and thumb had a more gold coloration, while the pinky was silver. Left middle and pinky were gold, the others hovering in a spectrum between, thumb was silver. The faintest irregularities existed between each pattern of her rings. Zanka didn’t know enough about metal work to make any firm guesses regarding her creation.

Squeezing their fingers together, he returned to ineffectually gnawing that midline scar. Though unsure of why he continuously gravitated to it, he didn’t have much drive to delve, particularly where he understood so little of what was in his own chest at the moment.

Jabber’s cock was leaking against Zanka’s stomach. He aroused easily and came quickly, but whether he got hard again was dependent on circumstances that Zanka had not yet puzzled out. Regardless, Jabber insisted on continuing regardless of his own sexual arousal. Initiating sex despite not being hard wasn’t an infrequent occurrence, either. Body not flung back into arousal as easily as Zanka’s shameful one, he had made it clear enough that sex was a bonus, pain was the prize.

He released Jabber’s hand. Winding his arms back around his waist, Zanka dug nails into him, pushed their torsos together, and let his own control over the force of his thrusts wash away.

In yet another stark contrast, Zanka’s body was a miserably insistent thing. He had been blissfully unaware of what it wanted, how strangely and strongly it was capable of wanting. Faced with the threat of separation, his skin rose a red alert. One more go, didn’t know when he’d get this again. Zanka was dragged to screaming hyperawareness of Jabber’s body, everything he’d ever laid teeth on needed to be bitten again, everything he’d held down needed more weight on it, every cut, every bruise, all needed review to assure absolute accuracy to fuel painfully embarrassing dreams. Each time he thought it was over, Jabber so much as breathed wrong and sent all blood screaming out of Zanka’s head.

All the more unfortunate that Jabber’s internal compass pointed to the worst in people. With so much of Zanka’s body taken up by his worst, Jabber only thought to indulge him.

“You’re pent up-” Jabber had snickered, a month ago, “Didn’t have the guts to get more done last night?”

Zanka had hidden in the bathroom to get dressed, and Jabber had whined incessantly to be allowed in for a shower. He’d been naked, clearly aware of Zanka’s growing erection. Somewhere in the mix, the shampoo got spilled on the bath mat. A toothbrush ended up on the floor. Toiletries were scattered across the room like drops of water. Jabber, still wet from his surprisingly honest request for said shower, was smugly seated on the hotel bathroom countertop getting fucked with his back to the mirror, his tailbone digging into the dripping faucet.

“Just- ah, fuck me when I’m out.” Jabber groaned, head flung back, words punctuated by thrusts against the mirror. His hand raked into Zanka’s hair, “I keep telling you, mmh, oh- fuck, this is what- HAH, happens, if-” He yelped, thighs squeezing, “-when, you don’t get, off, en- enough-”

They’d showered together afterwards. Among other things. Despite multiple requests, Zanka had not yet done anything while Jabber was unconscious in the nine months they’d been seeing one another.

At present, recollection of that incident was not helping Zanka’s problem after pulling them both from the shower. Doing his damnedest to ignore it, as he figured that there was only so much he could manage without waking Jabber up, he started on toweling them off. Once Jabber was somewhere in the range of 'no longer damp,' Zanka laid him out on the bed, air fleeing out from under the blanket as it was tossed over him.

Tugging his hands from beneath the sheets, Zanka set to work on wiping Mankira dry. Jabber shuddered, making another small sound as she shifted over his knuckles. His eyes cracked open. He blinked slowly and watched the motions of the towel over the rings, one leg shifting on the bed to loop his ankle around the bend of Zanka’s knee.

“You like her.” He slurred, practically sleep talking.

“Quiet, you.” Zanka muttered with no real vitriol.

Jabber shook his head, petulantly, “I like Assistaff. You have to say it back.” He muttered in a faint sing-song, eyes falling shut again, “I like Assistaff, you like Mankira.”

“She showed me I had a shit ton to learn, I’ll give her that.” He grumbled.

“You have to say it.” Jabber insisted, lips barely moving. His ankle fell from Zanka’s knee as his breathing evened out again.

Zanka sighed. Laying out next to Jabber, arm splayed out over his chest, he let himself stare at the side of his face for a while.

The more they fought, Zanka found odd moments when he stared up, wide eyed, at Jabber going full force. Too many times, he’d found his sense of abstract concepts- envy, faith, strength- lodged like splinters in the faces of people. Initially Jabber was a genius, a source of envy, Mankira engraved with Zanka’s weakness, flaunting his strength by holding it back. Now, sometimes-

They had once fought at night in a thunderstorm. Drenched, maskless in a polluted zone, locs swooped up by the wind like ink through water, Jabber had cackled and tried to drive them both up the metal hill in hopes of a lightning strike. Zanka had been struck with how Jabber seemed more like an extension of the Ground than a man. Their hostile earth had risen a gleeful wraith from the wreck that its inhabitants made of it, soaked in its toxins. Having learned to love the game, demanding to be dealt cards and play a hand, taunting through Jabber, ‘destroy me again, destroy me again-’

A wild thought came to him that bordered on euphoric. He was approaching level ground with that. Zanka, average, a nobody, had successfully beaten the hell out of him. Pinned him down, took him. Felt like sinking into the most vile pits that his ego held, like a blasphemy-

Other times, Jabber chattered about hallucinogenic toxins and chimneyflies and Tori’s wildfires. He slept next to Zanka, watching him dry Mankira with half closed eyes, barely coherent because he’d been so ‘bored’ that he’d stayed up for a week straight. Minimum.

“... She’s alright.”

Perhaps turning every light off was more advisable if he wanted either of them to sleep well, but Cthoni moved freely in the dark. The lamp on the desk hummed, highlighting the dust drifting lazily around it.

[10:23PM]

Zanka hadn’t yet managed to fall asleep. Pulling on his pants, he briefly debated on his shirt before giving into himself and tugging it on. Defaulting to his typical routine when still awake, he walked to the corner of the room and began running through techniques with Assistaff. Even the most basic of them, he started slowly, methodically, controlling his movements down to the breath and working to speed as if he were a beginner, scouring sensations in his hands for signs of rust. He repeated the same drill with different holds. On finally approaching points that he deemed close to acceptable, he’d move to the next technique and start over.

Assistaff’s techniques were forged from the ground up, more or less. While using his background in bo for a base, not only had he needed to make alterations for her jaws, she was never intended as weaponry and it was apparent in how she’d initially handled. Her weight was off center. She was not particularly aerodynamic. The way that her strikes landed were easily altered by the faintest bends in her shaft. On a twitch in his foot stance or the vaguest suspicion of his weight going off center, Zanka halted mid-movement and began again.

At this point, he was more familiar with Assistaff’s geometries than he was his own body. It felt more out of place to use a “proper” bo staff. The straight line, even weight, and perfect counterbalance generated naught but the uncanniness of finding a mathematically perfect shape in the far outskirts of nature. Tucking her under his arm, he returned to a neutral position with a snap. His downward block drill restarted, bare feet sliding soundlessly on the cold floor.

A shift in breathing behind him raised an alert. Halting, he swung around in time to see Jabber crack an eye open and instantly zero in on the drill. Under the blanket, his limbs stretched like a sleepy cat.

Zanka shook his head, “Go back to sleep.”

Jabber turned over onto his stomach and purred into the pillow, voice muffled, “All hot and bothered now.”

“Tough, I’m just bothered.” Even as he started his drill again, he watched Jabber from the corner of his eye, all too aware that running drills in directly front of him was the equivalent to-

Jabber’s eyes were half lidded. He’d shuffled forward on the bed to let his arms dangle over the side, head tilted coyly, locs spilling over his back, the bed, covering half of his face.

… Zanka took a deep breath, recentered himself, and started the drill over. If Jabber wasn’t as prone to sudden movements as he was, he’d have fixed his eyes forward and pretended not to notice him.

Jabber’s eyes narrowed as Zanka continued with the blocks. Eventually, he propped himself up on his elbows, “Why’re you just hitting air, I’m right here! Don’t make me come over there!”

“You do and you’re gonna feel like a fuckin’ library book, way I’ll return ya.”

“Can you not do that whole bit right now?!”

“It’s just drills.” Zanka said, flatly.

“Not drills, being- being all stubborn.” Jabber complained in that petulant tone ordinarily reserved for Cthoni, “You like wailing on me, you’re being stubborn just to be stubborn!”

Zanka scoffed, air whooshing around Assistaff, “Your dumbass conked out in the middle of the fight, I walked in here stubborn and I’ll stay stubborn!” He noted irately, ‘stubborn’ had tripped over that threshold of no longer sounding like a word in record time, “Imagine me pullin’ that shit on you, you’d never let me live that down!” He paused, then spat, “That’s if ya let me live, period!”

“Exactly what you pulled in the Trash Beast, pretty much.”

Zanka’s eye twitched. If his techniques of focus abruptly switched from defensive maneuvers to aggressive offensive maneuvers, that was a coincidence.

“Going all, tea kettle over ass straight into Mankira. Practically jumped on her!” Jabber sing-songed with a mean little grin, his head falling to the other side, “But you’re right, you almost didn’t live it down!”

“If I’m stubborn to be stubborn, you’re pissin’ me off just to do it. No dice.” Zanka growled. Again, air flew audibly around the force of his swing, “Fool me once.”

“Fool you twice, shame on you, fool you three times, wow. Fool you four, gullible’s written on all your ceilings.” Jabber hummed drowsily as his eyes traced the maneuvers, “Fool you nine times… dumbass… fool you twenty-”

Air shrieked when Assistaff swung down. She came to a perfect halt at a centimeter from Jabber’s shoulder. Zanka smiled unkindly at Jabber, whose grin was sent packing by the return of his sulk.

“Zanka, my friend, you are getting ballsy, I’ll give you that.” He leveled a flat stare up. Purple light started to swim around his fingers, fanning out erratically like the colorful fish in his notebook, “Hope your people like footing the bill for what this room’s gonna turn into in like, T minus five seconds.”

Zanka scoffed, “Yeah? ‘Cause I wanna brawl when you aren’t lookin’ and actin’ like- HEY-”

Assistaff’s jaws slammed over Jabber’s back, pinning him to the mattress, knocking his wind out, and smothering the purple glow in his hands.

“Sorry~” Jabber gasped, preening, “You were interrupted?”

“This is what I’m sayin’!” Zanka snapped, “You can barely pull Mankira out. Go the fuck to sleep, ya look like shit, Jabber! I’m not wastin’ either of our time fightin’ with that.”

Jabber thrashed against the jaws as more weight pressed down, “You say that, then go over there and start playing with Assistaff?!”

“Was I makin’ any noise?!”

“No, but I’d still know you’re there!”

The futility of the demand scraped against his teeth, even as his frustration forced it out, “Just ignore it and sleep!”

As if-

“That’s fucking rich.” Jabber bared his teeth, voice abruptly gone quiet as he hissed in sincere anger, “You’re just as bad, I don’t see you sleeping. Shit, in one of your weird ass moods, whenever you’re flipping your lid about who’s a, a genius and who’s- who’s, Joe Average and, I don’t even know what the hell you think the boss is. But I never tell you to stop it or ignore it, ‘cause you can’t. And I like that.” The anger melted to a small sulk as he shifted and clung to Assistaff’s jaws, “We’re the same. Hypocrite.”

Though quiet, the last word flew venomously through clenched molars, as if that was the worst of everything Zanka had done or said to him.

Silence washed over in the wake. Zanka opened his mouth, closed it. Slowly, warily, and sheepishly, he lifted the jaws off of Jabber, who eyed his movements with suspicion until Zanka leaned Assistaff against the wall with a word of thanks to her. When Jabber parroted that thanks without a trace of sarcasm, Zanka’s shoulders dropped in helpless concession. Bastard, he thought, tugging his shirt back off.

He crept onto the bed to settle over him and brushed the locs away to find his nape with his teeth, his other hand dragging the blankets out of the way and resting on Jabber’s exposed thigh.

Jabber shuddered, eyelids already falling as he pressed back against him, “Sadist. Teasing me. Should stab you.”

His teeth released as he fumbled with his pants, “Whine when I’m on ya, whine when I’m off ya.”

Jabber’s retort was cut into a gasp when Zanka pushed into him. Purple light flickered ineffectually over Mankira, but his eyes were barely cracking open and the grand majority of Jabber’s fight was now against his own body. Zanka’s fingers dug into his hips as he dragged him back, finding a slow rhythm.

Jabber dug his fingers into the pillow, into the mattress underneath, letting out a series of thin breaths, “Ah, bite, be a good boy, c’mon-”

Zanka’s teeth were already back in his shoulder, buried as if he meant to root there. He released sooner than he would’ve liked, solely to irritate Jabber. To make up for it, his right slid from Jabber’s hip to dig his palm into his breastbone, rubbing up and down until he groaned uncontrollably while arching his back. There was a certain rhythm to sounds that were continuously forced out by his body. When Jabber fell into that rhythm, Zanka’s ego coiled up and burned in his stomach with ugly pleasure, his chest light as if with victory, and he gnawed the inside of his cheek to quell the violent spike in arousal.

“Ghh- god, where-” Jabber cried out, drool rolling down his chin as he shoved his chest into the meat of Zanka’s palm, “-’s fucking brutal, where’d you learn, ah-”

“Family business.” Not in the mood to elaborate, he bit into Jabber’s nape again and doubled the strength going into his palm. Jabber’s answering shout made every muscle in his neck tense against Zanka’s teeth. He started thrusting faster. When Jabber started releasing quick, thin moans, he pulled out. Ignoring the aggrieved noise, Zanka leaned back, flipped Jabber over, and dragged one leg over his shoulder before shoving in again.

Panting, Jabber dragged Zanka’s hand back to his breastbone insistently, “You’re- really, on one, tonight.”

He bent Jabber’s leg at an angle he knew to be uncomfortable and indulged the quiet request to restart sawing with his palm, “Don’t want you gettin’ off on the sheets.”

The answering cackle was interrupted by a hitched breath, a moan, “You’re, mm, so weird about, that-”

“It’s fuckin’ uncomfortable!”

“Yeah, so’s, having sex with your pants on-” Jabber was cut off by a yelp as Zanka folded his thigh over at the waist and redoubled his efforts to keep Jabber’s mouth busy with screaming.

As a further preventative measure, he moved his hand from Jabber’s chest to his throat, pinning him, letting his eyes devour Jabber’s entire body jolting up and down, unable to close his mouth or control how his panting screams forced his chest out and up. Once more, that series of thin, fast whines started flooding out. He could feel them vibrating against his palm. Another reason why Zanka preferred to be choking Jabber when he made him come.

When Jabber’s eyes rolled back, Zanka fucked him through it. Afterwards, Jabber seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes open- Zanka determined his first order of business, even before getting off, was exponentially increasing the difficulty of staying awake. Leaning forward, he let Jabber’s leg fall from his shoulder to drape over his hips. His breath escaped slowly while he forced himself to slow his speed but retain his force, devouring the thin, punched out sounds that escaped as a result.

Eventually, Zanka came inside with a shivering gasp. Panting, he remained there for a while, forehead resting on Jabber’s chest.

[12:35AM]

Zanka woke up to a long exhale against his ear, a shift of legs. He furrowed his eyebrows at the dark ceiling, wondering at how dark ceilings and Jabber’s presence had both changed meanings to him.

Nightmares had plagued his hospital stay after the Trash Beast. Refusing to stop shutting his eyes on time every night, he lived out those dreams, knowing how he’d wake up in a cold sweat with his hands quaking and teeth sunk into his lip. Teeth bared at that dark ceiling, he’d grit out an oath through his panting, to himself, to the dark of the room, to the peeping of the machine monitoring his vitals, and, most of all, to Jabber.

(“Gonna knock you on your ass, you crazy bitch.” He’d wheezed, “And then ’m gonna beat you into the ground like you’re a fuckin’ tent pole.”)

As his eyes slowly adjusted to a new dark ceiling, Jabber crawled over the top of him, buried his face in his neck, and inhaled.

Zanka grumbled, “You awake?”

“Mhmmph-”

“Sleep.”

Jabber shook his head, locs tickling Zanka’s neck, breath warming him. Another long, deep inhale.

“Are you smellin’ me?” He raised an eyebrow, “What’s with that, anyways? You and smellin’ everything.”

“Smells good.”

“Never even knew I had a smell.”

“Pfft. ‘Kay, I get why you think I’m a ‘genius’-”

“Piss off-”

“People just have smells, everyone knows that.” Jabber’s lips brushed his neck, “You smell like pine trees.”

“I mean, by now I know.” Zanka snapped, the ‘genius’ dig burrowing into him unpleasantly, “Ya never shut up about it.”

For one reason or another, Jabber had never appeared to narrow down Assistaff’s exact material, though he’d clearly taken to her scent regardless. Zanka wasn’t sure if he wanted Jabber to know. Wordlessly, he shifted, bringing a hand up to rest on Jabber’s nape and push absently on the bruises left by his fingers, his teeth. Jabber shivered, burying his nose under Zanka’s ear and taking another long breath.

“Dreamed we went to the stone quarry.”

“That wasn’t a dream, dumbass. We sparred and ya conked out.”

“Oh?”

“How long were you up this time?”

“Long as I wanted to. Since… a few days after we fought?” He huffed as if he'd been inconvenienced party, “When you fell on your ass.”

Zanka's indignance was violently shoved out of the way by incredulity, “Holy shit, Jabber. So what, now I’m not just lookin’ out for me, I gotta win to keep ya from gettin’ so wired you drop?!”

“I got bored.”

Zanka scowled at the ceiling, “Use Mankira to knock yourself out if ya have to, this is really gonna start catchin’ up to ya one day.”

No response but a thin string of giggles as Jabber nuzzled further in, arms squeezing around his torso until it hurt. His breath evened out, eventually.

[2:34AM]

“I dunno why I want you to know some things, but I want you to- know. In Aulis, they used to say that if- um, a calling baby? Is that what it was? A called birth? They’re born with their head in water? I think. My memory’s bad, but- so they’re- they don’t breathe. They're not alive to begin with, since they breath water, is what they said. In Aulis.” He repeated, vaguely, “And once they die, they can’t get buried. ‘Cause they were never actually alive. I forgot that. Like I forgot why I know how to take inventory on me.”

The motel lamp hummed alone for a while.

“I’m going to show you places I’ve been around someday, I’ve seen shit you wouldn’t believe. Before the Sphere falls, we have to fight a lot, and I’m gonna show you those places. I haven’t thought that far ahead, but. I mean, just. Someday. Come and see. You'll think it's cool.” He muttered, mistily, “After the Sphere’s down, we’ll just see what happens, but- um, I don’t know why- if you end up going to some of those places alone, I think I want you to remember I was there.”

[2:46AM]

Their torsoes had separated, though their legs were still tangled. Zanka shifted and crawled over Jabber to rest over top of him.

After a few minutes, Jabber’s arms and legs wound around him in turn.

[4:32AM]

Zanka felt himself being shoved from beneath before he managed to get his eyes open. He groaned, burying his face in Jabber’s neck and tightening his hold.

Jabber swatted the side of his head, “I gotta pee.”

Making a petty display of his exhale, Zanka rolled over and off. In the ugly, noisy light of the motel room, he turned his head to the side and watched Jabber sway on his feet, shoulders listing to the left.

He kept watching until Jabber came back a few moments later. Jabber had a strange manner of washing his hands, now that Zanka looked. He seemed to treat every surface as its own individual plane, scrubbing the side of one finger, going to the bottom, the top, the other side, and following suit with the rest. The same process took place with his palms.

In the same vein, Zanka sometimes woke early enough to see Jabber rummaging in his bag, polishing Mankira, polishing his bracelets, or spraying his hair down with something that smelled vaguely floral. He inspected himself in the mirror meticulously. Somehow, his body’s obliteration was fair game, but otherwise, Jabber took better care of his appearance than Zanka, whose morning ritual that didn’t revolve around Assistaff involved splashing his face with water, then combing his hair out of said face. He found that a little difficult to wrap his head around.

Jabber saw Zanka watching him, tilted his head, and grinned in a way that Zanka immediately didn’t like.

“Don’t even fuckin’ think abo-”

Jabber took a running start and Zanka barely dodged glimpsing a day in the life of a landing platform. He grabbed Jabber’s ankle and yanked his foot out from under him. They grappled, though it did not stay grappling for long.

[7:23AM]

Once again, Jabber’s legs were hooked around his hips as they panted, neither of them able to recall who initiated this time.

Jabber was stroking Zanka’s ear tassel, “Zanka.”

Zanka blinked slowly, “Hm?”

The movements of his fingers stopped, “You get circles too.”

His eyebrows furrowed. Blinking blurrily at the light, he shifted to rest his chin on Jabber’s chest, “Circles? How d’ya mean?”

Jabber stared at the ceiling, before smiling. In the strange light of the motel, the lines under his eyes were so dark that they bordered on gray, and those were the only circles Zanka could see. The stroking of his earring picked up again.

“I dunno the real name.” Jabber breathed, eyebrows raised as if he were having the thought for the first time. His lips quirked and he closed his eyes.

Zanka frowned and made to prop himself up, only Jabber wrapped both of his arms around his head and shoved him to his neck, pushing up to ask for a bite.

“Jabber-”

“Nevermind.” He sing-songed. Nails combed through Zanka’s scalp, thighs squeezed around him, hips pushed up, “Good boy, don’t mind it, describing it’s boring and I don’t know the name.”