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Kabal is spread out on his ratty couch smoking a poorly rolled cigarette when the front door opens. He doesn’t look up. Only two people come barging into this place like they own it, and only one Kabal actually enjoys the company of. He blows a puff of smoke into the air as he waits for any tells between his boss and his… well, maybe a label isn’t exactly something he wants to put on it yet.
He only has to keep an ear out for about five seconds before the sound of metal plating, throwing stars, and leather hit the floor. Then the grunts, the murmuring, the kicking aside Kabal’s bags of garbage he keeps meaning to take down to the bins. He snorts quietly as he looks over the back of the couch to see Reiko making his way over with such a swagger that he knows he’s in for a big, epic story.
“You look very pleased with yourself, big guy.”
“I have not been bested even once in sparring today.”
“No wonder I can smell you from here.”
Reiko looks at Kabal with a deep frown, but the warrior continues his path towards the couch. He folds his arms on the top of the couch, crouching down so that he can lean his face close to Kabal. He presses his nose against his cheek, never once deterred by the scars there, and just remains there for a moment. Both of them remain still, letting Reiko bask in the moment before he presses a kiss to Kabal’s cheek and stands up again.
“You also smell bad.”
“Yeah, but at least that’s just the smoke.”
“You need to sweat more. Spar more. I cannot have my number two losing shape.”
“I do, just not as much as y- hey, hang on, I’m not number two,” Kabal says, reaching over to swat at Reiko, who dodges swiftly and laughs that full, raspy laugh that makes Kabal’s hair stand on ends. The speedster continues to swat the air until Reiko hops over the back of the couch to sit next to him. “You’re still a mess, off the furniture.”
“All of your furniture has been sullied already,” Reiko says as he stretches out, only in the tight-fit trousers he wears under all his armour. The likely pile near the front door will be Kabal’s problem to clean up before Reiko needs to return to Outworld. He doesn’t ask when that will be - sometimes he hopes that if he doesn’t, there won’t be a an answer, and he will just stay. But neither men can deal with that, neither men have the time for that.
He snorts to himself at the idea, maybe out of dismissal for it, as Reiko stretches out and rests his feet in Kabal’s lap, his arm resting on the back of the couch as he relaxes. Or, well, relaxes as much as the warrior ever can after training. As he stretches, Kabal takes another drag of his cigarette as his other hand goes to idly rub one of Reiko’s feet.
They sit in silence, the only sound being the blows of smoke into the air that don’t set off the fire alarm that the landlord promised to fix but never did. It’s not like Kabal cares. If the building caught on fire, and burnt everything down with him inside, maybe he wouldn’t even notice. More burns, more smoke in his lungs… the thought of it makes his skin itch all over. His grip tightens on Reiko’s foot before he just sighs and shakes his head. He taps the cigarette out, the ashes landing on the scraped up wooden floor.
He flicks the stub somewhere in the corner of the room. As his fingers continue to massage Reiko’s foot to ignore the urge to scratch at the front of his neck where the scars bother him the most. They remain in silence still until Kabal physically cannot sit there any longer, needing to move before the thoughts and the itch becomes too much. With a loud sigh, he pushes Reiko’s feet away from him.
“You need a wash, big guy.”
“No. Your Earthrealm baths are tiny. I will wait until I am back in Outworld, where I have access to the finest bathing chambers.”
Kabal just glares at Reiko before he gets to his feet in order to drag the warrior into the bathroom with him. He’d rather get to Reiko shower after being covered in sweat and probably spit and some dried blood than deal with all the awful things starting to bubble in the back of his mind. He tries to pull Reiko up by his wrist, but he’s not the general of Shao Kahn’s army for nothing. The guy’s big, tough, and painfully hard to move.
“Just shower, Reiko. Come on.”
“No. What is a shower, again? That thing you stand under while it waters you like you are a flower? I am a soldier, not an orchid.”
“I’ll join you.”
And the next thing Kabal knows, the shower is running at just the right lukewarm temperature for his body to handle. Reiko is fumbling with the fastens of his trousers as Kabal is padding the bottom of his shower with his tanktop to prevent the inevitable leak that will ruin his floors even more than they already are. He stands there, tapping his fingers against his arm before Reiko drops his trousers and stands proudly in the buff.
The shower itself, it turns out, is a very tight fit. Especially considering Reiko is built like a brick house, but Kabal doesn’t particularly mind squeezing up next to him, nor seeing him up close and wet. He keeps looking up at the shower head with a deep frown as the water begins to unstick his hair to his head, the long dark strands covering his undercut and now landing on his shoulders. It’s rare he lets it down unless he’s sleeping, and even then he leaves it up more often than not.
Kabal reaches up to play with the wet ends of Reiko’s hair, their eyes locking for a moment before Reiko leans down to kiss his cheek again, his face slowly slipping down to slot perfectly in the crook of Kabal’s neck.
“You smell better already,” Reiko says, his breath tickling the front of Kabal’s neck right where the scars irritate him the most. It’s oddly soothing.
“You don’t.”
Reiko just grunts, not moving from Kabal’s neck as he reaches around him to grab the bottle of shower gel. Miraculously given their small space, he manages to pull his arms back just enough to squirt some into his hands before getting to work lathering the warrior’s front up. A small puff of air escapes Reiko’s nose as soon as the other man’s hands are on his chest, his always flexed muscles beginning to relax.
He relaxes further into Kabal’s touch, the only person who would ever dream to trust him this much, his head falling back slightly as Kabal works his muscles with the urgency of a man who just needs to keep moving. It’s almost comical, Kabal thinks, this moment of intimacy between two men built for slaughter. Reiko mumbles incoherently against the other man’s neck, his hair starting to tumble down Kabal’s shoulder as well.
“You’re heavy,” Kabal says with a hitch in his voice that doesn’t normally belong there. He’s scrubbing Reiko’s sides and underarms without much thought, focused more on keeping the soldier up as he all but leans against him. “Stand up, Reiko.”
But of course, that just makes Reiko press more of his weight against Kabal with that stupid smug smirk on his face that Kabal can’t even see but he knows is there. Reiko’s hands are limp by his sides as Kabal is slowly being pushed back against the shower door because of this big, buff moron who thinks he’s funny. Kabal swats him on the back of his head a few times.
“Fuck off, man!” Kabal says, his laugh starting to echo around his small bathroom as he grabs Reiko’s hair to pull his head back, just to lock their eyes. As suspected, Reiko’s grin is, albeit tired, shit-eating and smug. His hands quickly slide round to rest on the small of Kabal’s back before he leans in to press about six quick kisses against his lips.
“You are a fitting stand for the General to lean against.”
“What, you’re pulling rank on me now, big guy?”
“Is it working?”
“No.”
“Foolish choice.”
Kabal laughs again as he reaches around to scrub Reiko’s back and shoulder blades, pressing up against him to do so and hoping that the leverage will work as a counterweight, but it doesn’t seem to be. Reiko just chews on his own thoughts as he’s washed, making content grunts when the attention goes to his hair.
It takes a long while to untangle, unknot, shampoo, and condition, but Kabal does it anyway. Even as Reiko rests more and more of his weight against him, the tension from his earlier training visibly leaving his body. Kabal just smiles as Reiko holds him closer, pushing his head up into Kabal’s hands like a cat desperate for more pets. It’s that soft side of such a deadly man that makes it so difficult for him to leave every time he does.
“You are my favourite Earthrealmer,” Reiko says after a few minutes of peaceful silence before he goes to pepper more kisses against Kabal’s lips, and all over his face, so unusually gentle that Kabal could just beg him to stay with him forever then and there.
“You’re so sappy when you’re tired.”
“Do not ever let anyone know.”
“Who the fuck would I tell?“
“Whoever you want. Maybe even Kano.”
“I’d rather shove one of your throwing stars up my own ass than tell Kano anything about my dating life.”
Reiko laughs at that, raspy and soft, his exhaustion becoming more and more evident. Kabal leads him out of the shower to towel him off before he shakes like a dog (something he’d actually seen when they once got out of the rain together) but he happily lets the warrior carry him to bed. Reiko lays Kabal down like he’d break if he didn’t do it just right before he all but falls on top of him, pressing his full weight against the speedster once again.
Kabal doesn’t have it in him to tell him off, wanting to enjoy this night before Reiko’s gone again. He hates how happy the other man makes him, when he’s been so used to just doing nothing but rot in his apartment and smoke until he goes to sleep. It’s all so weird, so new even after all this time. When was the last time Kabal was this nice to anybody? If that was even the word for it. Reiko makes him nice, and he apparently makes Reiko soft. It’s all so wrong.
Reiko falls asleep immediately, but Kabal stays awake for a little while longer. There’s always something to think about for him, always dome negging fear or past nightmare that crawls up on him. But it doesn’t tonight. Instead, Kabal just lays there and plays with Reiko’s hair as if the shower never ended, keeping that moment fresh for him as he starts to doze off. Much like Reiko himself, he doesn’t want to let it go.
“‘Night, big guy. Love you,” Kabal says into the night air before he closes his eyes, Reiko’s drool already hitting his chest. He doesn’t need an answer. Not now, at least. He just wants it to be known, to him and the bedsheets and the scent of shampoo all over his fingers. This… sweetness doesn’t belong to him and won’t for long, it’ll leave like it always does.
But for now, everything is staying right where Kabal wants it.