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Zanka is remarkably good at pretending he's got it all under control. In Cleaning, in life, and, most certainly, in whatever you'd name the gravitational pull that keeps dragging him back to Jabber, over and over, like the universes' spat out gum.
That said, Zanka's not delusional. No, he knows better than anyone that the two of them, unstoppable force and immovable object, are built like the opposite ends of a battery; power that burns yet dies eventually.
Still, though, through all his intelligence and weariness, Zanka keeps pressing. Because there's a place Jabber's carved, now, underneath his ribs. Deep and aching and stupid and loud. Something that leaves aches in his bones and bruises in his common sense.
Maybe it's made worse by the days when Zanka tries, truthfully, genuinely, to be some semblance of a rational human being. He'll get up, wash the blood off his knuckles and take that long, creaking exhale through his teeth. Tell himself in the mirror: that's it. You ain't doin' this anymore. This is the night yer grow the fuck-up. Walk away.
Heh, walk away from the guy that's his crazy and his medicine simultaneously, what a big idea that is.
But then there's a sound. A swing. Bloodshed in an awkward time and place. Jabber's got this magical way of showing up when Zanka's caught in-between an emotion he can't fathom: the rush of Enjin's praise, the annoyance of Rudo's existence, the hatred of himself, the calamity of his own fuckin' God complex.
And Jabber will laugh, low and rough or high and crazy.
Jabber will move about like a shadow creeping up each ridge in Zanka's vertebrae.
Jabber will call him 'my boy' or 'Bad Attitude' with the exact same cadence he calls him 'baby' with.
And every time, every time, Zanka pivots. The rules will melt, jello soft. And the rough lingering agony of last-times fight, last-times high, will be all but forgotten the second Mankira's metal backhands him into next week. Zanka always goes.
A part of Zanka hates that about himself. His feet will move before his brain, and every instinct will shout at him to rationalize, to remember some training-simulation where he gets everything wrong. Zanka remains ever composed and Jabber's crazy opens him, wide, like a locked cabinet. Suddenly, he can't tell the difference between anger and longing anymore. The second Jabber looks at him with something much too dangerously close to longing and delight and need, or maybe even want. It makes Zanka's pulse spike like it's trying to claw its way out of him.
Zanka asks himself: was you always this angry? Was you always this weak? The answer? Yes. He's nothing if not exploited. Nothing if not perfection. Nothing if not a single drop of sweat that cascades down his brow and reminds him of his own humanity. A weakness, same as the rest.
Hilariously, Jabber doesn't help. Because he's toxic in the way storms are: destructive, even with no intention beyond existence. Jabber's a painful balance between deliberate button pressing, torture porn, aching hurt and crazed glee. Every fight is a game, every hurt is intimacy, every bruise is a compliment he thanks Zanka for, or thinks Zanka should thank him for. Something like that.
Zanka and Jabber: Idiots, fools, masochist, two sides of the same ugly, ugly coin.
They're supposed to hate each other.
Ouch.
Jabber talks to him, though. Jabber fuckin' talks to him and it hurts Zanka so good. Jabber will look at him and understand him in ways that feel simultaneously dangerous and relieving Because Zanka's never had someone, sans the Cleaners, who watch him fight and sees joy instead of flaws. Someone who matches his freak, beat for beat and word for word, until the rest of the world becomes static background noise between them.
The crux of the issue? The ugly meat off the bone? Jabber makes Zanka feel wanted in the most backwards kind of way. Not in the way Enjin does: useful, supported, good lad, folded into a tight team that actually cares if he's breathing. The care Enjin gives is the kind that's warm in your ribs. Safe and stable and predicable.
Jabber's wanting is different. It's feral. It's the wanting when two animals circle, testing the pressure points and learning the shapes. The wanting that says: you're interesting 'cause you can hurt me real nice. And I'm interested 'cause you can take it.
It's not…good.
It's probably not healthy, either.
It doesn't matter. It wedges its way under his ribs into a private part of himself he swore he'd never touch.
Hah.
There's a fat tumble of words that Zanka imagines. He imagines them in a box and wonders if it's what Rudo sees when he's looking at a pile of crap. There's devotion, violence, insanity, obsession, brutality, reality. Zanka imagines them swirling together into something new and gorgeous and ugly all the same.
Jabber's impressed because Zanka fights like he means it. Like he's dying for it. Like he's got teeth behind that pretty-boy face. Assistaff is a weapon, and he'll swing her hard enough to bruise Jabber's core. Jabber likes that very much so.
But, it's mutual.
And isn't that the worst of all? The want to be wanted. The want to be good. The crumbling foundation's under Zanka's every action.
There's power in being seen that clearly.
Jabber knows. He ain't dumb.
The toxins make it worse.
Jabber will hit Zanka and something simultaneously planned and random is in his bloodstream. Dissolving whatever filter he fought to keep all this time. Suddenly, Zanka's loose and easy 'round the edges. Laughing through the pain. Sayin' things he wouldn't dare say sober: little truths and half-baked admissions. All those little white-truths that usually crowd behind his molars. Crap that's a hell of a lot easier to admit when he can't feel his face.
Zanka knows he's becoming someone Jabber can mark and read and rely on for his own specific flavor of chaos.
It's a double-edged trip. Jabber gives him everything and nothing because that's not what he's there for. The fight will end and Zanka will walk away feeling like the worst version of himself: reckless, needy, mistaking violence for connection because it's the only language they both speak fluently.
Once again, double-edged-
That version of himself is the one Jabber keeps coming back for.
Destruction and thrill and care and cruelty. Feedback loop, they are.
Jabber is Zanka's worst enemy.
The crueler truth is that Zanka is also his own.
Somehow, everything. Somehow, nothing at all.
Jabber's mind ain't never still, even when his body is.
It's not still now. As he waits perched atop a rock, squatting like an overly dramatic gargoyle. Jabber watches Zanka sprawled out in the dirt like he's suddenly tossed an overly pretty action figure across the room.
“Man,” muttered, lose, disjointed, “I ain't even hit you that hard.”
Jabber snorts at his own monologue, jumps from his perch, and wanders about the space in a sing-song circle.
Zanka doesn't respond. Still out.
“Okay, he-he, you got me! Maybe I did. Jus' a lil'… baby tap…bay-be,” Jabber does a tiny gesture with his fingers as if showing Zanka how small the 'tap' was. “Man, your skull dramatic as hell.”
Zanka twitches in the way bodies do when they're not quite ready to come back to the living yet. Jabber squats, leans forward, watches him twitch with a cheeky, detached amusement.
“C'mon Zanka,” Jabber sways side-to-side, a rhythm only he can hear. “Gettin' so bored here. Y'bein' rude. Real rude. Rude, Bad Attit-tude. Rhymes, hah!”
The waiting sucks, but Jabber doesn't mind, despite the complaints. He'll wait for Zanka. Jabber will wait. Mind ringing with the feeling of twisted, self-inflicted chaos. Jabber's favorite song.
He sits properly and rocks back and forth in a stimulating rhythm. Freestyles a bit. 'Rude' and 'attitude' and what else rhymes with that? Then stops freestyling as suddenly as he starts, still rocking, in favor of locking his attention on gnawing at the soft flesh around his thumbnail. Enough to bleed, but not enough to dribble into Mankira's thumb ring. Yeah. Jabber's real good at that.
No. Yes. Maybe. Whatever. It's a'ight.
It doesn't matter. Jabber will wait.
Because Jabber knows, in a deep private part of himself, if he could fathom the concept of privacy, that Zanka is the closest thing he's got to a real bad habit.
Clumsier than drugs.
Messier than violence.
Zanka makes him-
“Ah, screwed!” Jabber laughs, freestyle rap one step closer. “Rude, bad attitude, and screwed the fuck-up. Cause das what you be makin' my head like, man!”
Jabber curls up again to rock. Happy and content in his own monologue. “You gotta wake up soon, yeah? So I can tell you all this. And what you gonna do, huh? You gonna look at me like I'm crazy. Jabber likes that. You cute as hell when you get all crunchy. And I'm all screwed up.”
Jabber rocks:
Back, forth, back, forth.
Zanka stirs, breathes, stirs.
Back, forth, back, forth.
Then, he tilts his head all bird like, delighted to watch Zanka breath and muster up all the ways he's going to fight him when he stands.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jabber chews his thumb again with the same nervous energy. Muttering. Nodding as if Zanka's given a truly thoughtful reply. “Man's addicted. Frontin' like you ain't, but I know you are.”
Jabber giggles a little.
“And you want me? Yeah, you want me in all the wrong ways, that's my favorite part.”
Lower, softer, more…intimate. Jabber leans his body in close, not touching but close enough. Like what he's sharing is some semblance of a little secret, as painful as life is to live. Jabber says it with glee, though, because he can't tell the difference.
“And Jabber want's you right back. Hell yeah, I do. 'Cause you-you fight like you mean it. You hurt Jabber, yeah, man. You hurt me in all the right ways.”
Jabber laughs hard, then wipes a stray tear that slips at the laugh-reflex. “Yeah, you one crazy-ass motherfucker. Hm…”
Zanka groans, then. And Jabber jumps up in glee.
“And we're back!” He cheers, “rise 'n shine, baby boy! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!”
Hah, yeah, screwed.
Jabber's got him down in the dirt, knees bracketing Zanka's hips, gangly, skinny limbs all over him. Hands fisted, hard, in the collar of Zanka's jacket while he giggles like a maniac. Zanka's head's ringing from the impact on the ground, and there's no place he'd rather be.
But, then, Jabber shifts, leaning in for another taunting laugh, all up in Zanka's space on his own terms, and it happens.
His hoodie, lose and large, slips off one shoulder.
And Zanka's eyes catch it before his mind can register-
Oh.
A constellation of scars.
Thick, thin, sharp and brutal and-
Deliberate.
Some are lighter. Some dark reddish-purple hues against his skin. Some fresh enough that the cold air probably stings.
And Zanka just looks.
He's seen wounds on Jabber before. A lot of them a given. A lot of them earned. A few of them damn-well deserved. But these aren't those.
Zanka thinks, maybe, these are quiet, private wounds. The same that he carries, though in different shapes.
The thought's immediately dashed because Jabber doesn't really understand that kind of private hurt. His pain is loud and thrilling and rewarding and honest, and if it's not, he'll tell himself it is until it's true.
Jabber notices the pause, follows Zanka's gaze and tilts his head with this feral curiosity. Crazed grin softening into something curious and inquisitive, and probably too young. Like Zanka's asked him a real thought-provoking question.
“What?” Jabber asks. No shame or worry or concept of either. The idea that the world is supposed to treat that pain as if it's something tragic? Nah, bullshit. Jabber's never been taught the language of self-preservation. The scars are Tuesday's to him. Marking's on a too worn map. Jabber's a creature that dances though violence and knows no tenderness. Suffering, merely a background noise in his whole routine.
Zanka hesitates.
And, for a second, something cold and ugly slips into him. Not fear or revulsion, that would be hypocrisy, but a sharp clarity. Like being presented with a lesson he's avoided for too long:
Jabber isn't a fix.
Jabber isn't his big break. His moment of proof. The break in his routine.
They're both damaging, hurting boys who go about their pain in different ways. The same breed of car-wreck in entirely different directions. They're not healing each-other, no, of course not, they're just twp animals who've stopped running long enough to catch each others gaze.
“Man, you gotta get a hold of that starin' problem you got,” Jabber quips, voice bright and unbothered and amused.
Zanka might laugh. Could cry. Does neither.
Instead, he let's out a shaky breath and holds Jabber's gaze, right in the eyes rather than the mess of scar tissue on his bicep.
“S'nothin',” Zanka mutters, “You jus'…yer just say here, alright?”
Jabber grins, delighted and amused by the development.
“Hell yeah, imma stay. Where the fuck else am I gonna go, huh? Man, you're so crazy-”
Jabber goes on. Words sarcastic and feral and amused and weirdly endearing.
It shouldn't be comforting. It shouldn't but it is.
And more words spring to mind, clogging up Zanka's mouth. Mind occupied by the thought that they can't fix each other. And nothing good will come of this.
It doesn't matter, Zanka will stay anyway.