Work Text:
There's something kind of special about the idea. Warriors marked by ornamentation they entirely underestimated.
Because there's Jabber, sure, followed by the several notes that follow him always, scrawled in the margins. Those little things Zanka keeps uncovering the longer they keep meeting up in strange places and telling themselves, I'll-kill-him-next-time.
Ankle length braids. Heavy and beaded with copious little tiffs of metal threaded into the ends. The kind that move even in the rare moments Jabber is still. The kind that drag against his boots, or coil when he crouches, or swing like dangerous pendulums when he fights.
Culture, maybe. History. Violence. Maintenance. Some unhinged display of I-did-this-because-I-can. With Jabber, it's a coin toss.
Jabber: Excessive, impractical, perfect.
Zanka won't note that last one out loud because he's still in the denial stage of that particular ordeal.
And, see, here's the thing: Zanka keeps unwillingly learning new ways Jabber goes about this trash-filled world like he owns the space. Keeps discovering new gears in the internal clock that keeps that crazy bastard ticking. Rusty ones, always there, but only just seen now. And that's a scary thing in itself. The things Zanka discovers as he gets to know the other boy. A hairstyle like that seems to contradict all of Zanka's initial first impressions. It's, what, patience? Maintenance? Someone touching, close to the face. How it's care, even if Jabber likes to pretend he doesn't care about anything other than kicking teeth into throats.
Zanka quashes that thought under his eyelids. Wondering at what point he got so sloppy and slow as to care how Jabber styles himself, or how long he spends in the fucking chair.
How dare you, brain, Zanka might think. Teasing him with visions of a guy he's still pretending he hates. It's uncalled-for, like everything that happens to Zanka. Well and truly uncalled-for.
Still, his brain seems to do as it pleases. Stripped of all inhibitions when one Jabber Wonger is involved.
That being said, when he pins Zanka to the ground in a scuffle, knees bracketing his hips, forearm at his throat, Mankira glinting obscenely, and the braids spill down around them like a curtain?
It's, uh, thought-provoking.
They slide over Zanka's shoulders. Brush his cheek. There's cold against his temple, a little gold piece swinging idly back and forth and tapping against it. The little knock-on-wood to company, Zanka's good fortune of not dying this morning. They stare into each other's eyes and it's cinematic, strange, beautiful in the way an oil spill is.
And for half a second, Zanka's ever helpful brain goes:
Oh, he's gonna use one. He's gonna choke me out-
Because Zanka thinks in terms of weapons, right? Everything as a weapon. Hands and teeth and concrete and gravity. Anything he can grapple in his attempt to prove, anything that keeps his teeth out of dirt a little longer.
But Jabber? Hah!
Jabber don't.
Not with that, anyway.
Not with…work.
That's what it is, isn't it? Work. Not vanity.
Maybe that says yet another thing about Jabber that Zanka kind quite process. The way he'll slam Zanka into concrete, dose him with random, or not so random, toxins. He'll laugh when he bleeds. He'll take a kick to the ribs as a compliment. But he won't weaponize the most logical thing to weaponize after Mankira and fists, nails, teeth.
Maybe there's a quiet pride in something crafted with effort. Like all that lovin' and TLC Jabber gives Mankira, only to find himself covered in blood to the elbows the next day. There's respect in labor, perhaps. A respect in the job. Respect in something capable, done well, meeting it's potential. It's sexy…Zanka's thinking about Mankira again.
Zanka himself? Maybe in the grand scheme of things, Zanka is 'half-assed' in Jabber's little brain filing cabinet. There's no telling as to how he sees the world, what he's been through, what he's put others through. Zanka is entertaining. Zanka is worth his time. But Zanka's got a way to go before he's worth risking a single. Stray. Hair.
Zanka keeps finding out new things about him. And there's something deeply unsettling, intoxicating, about a guy who's crazy, reckless with everything except things they've built with care. It implies a code, or a hierarchy, or worse…a hidden tenderness.
The intrusive thought lives in Zanka's head anyway. Along with the shred of hurt that Jabber doesn't see him as important enough to strangle. Like braids are sacred and Zanka is, always, under review. That's… rude.
Jabber won't. But it's kind of intoxicating that he could.
Jabber swings and Zanka takes one-two steps before rearing into a defense stance. There's suddenly a pause, a pull, a weight under his feet and Jabber freezes, tugged a little in Zanka's direction.
"Move."
Zanka blinks, "what?"
"You're standin' on six hours. Move."
Zanka immediately moves as if he's stepped on a sacred relic, he has, and side steps. Jabber moves the braid over his shoulder and the gold pieces on the end clink!
Clink!
Clink!
Clink!
Symbolism this and care that, there's one thing Jabber can't fight nor win against: physics. At least not that Zanka's aware of, he keeps an open mind in Jabber's case.
Regardless, it manifests as ankle length, beaded braids vs. a young man who can't seem to resist a sharp, full body spin mid-combat.
Zanka doesn't notice in the moment, of course. He's moving too fast. Rolling and rotating and ducking. Laughing, too. Courtesy of their beautiful routine. Jabber is too, moving with that weird grace he manages. As subtle as a gun shot yet graceful as a dancer. One of the many oxymorons of Jabber's existence. Jabber spins and the braids follow with this kind of delayed moment, half a second behind him, before snapping, violently across whatever's in range.
Zanka's forearm, for one.
Impact. A brief register. One then the next. It doesn't matter.
Later in the bath. Zanka treks damp feet across the cold floor and sighs at the fogged up mirror no doubt hiding the state his hair's become in the hot steam. Zanka lifts his forearm to swipe it and-
A reddening, linear welt.
Zanka frowns.
"Man, what the hell."
Then, the memory hits. Sensory over visual. This sudden flash of a quick, metallic flick. Entirely accidental, the collateral damage to Jabber's being. A weight passing too close to tender skin and hitting too hard. Adrenaline rushing too fast to parse the lash.
Zanka stands there, semi-naked, drying in the air, looking like a drowned creature of sorts while he processes the reality,
He got hit by hair.
Hair.
Bruh.
There's something real cosmically humiliating about that.
He'll probably take it out on Rudo later.
"Yo, who put hands on you?" Jabber's head tilts in curiosity as he eyes the welt on Zanka's temple. Braids shifting about as he moves all up in Zanka's space.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Then he mock-gasps in absolute scandal, "Zanka, baby, you been fightin' other guys behind Jabber's back?"
Zanka puffs up like a bird, bristling at the tease. "Shut yer mouth. It was you, idiot."
Jabber shifts. Gets a closer look.
"…Don't look like my work."
"It was your fat head."
Jabber blinks for several seconds. Not even gloating. Just processing.
"Oh."
Then:
"Huh."
Jabber does this stank face, slow nod combination. Like he's kinda smug about the whole thing. He didn't choose it, but it did happen. And Jabber kind of acknowledges it with this accidental efficiency. Impressive. Versatile, even. Jabber hums all contemplative-like.
Does he like hurting Zanka in a way he didn't intend? Probably not. He's real measured like that. But it's overshadowed for appreciation of a style of strange, interpersonal combat he hadn't quite considered up until this point: he's been carrying six lightning sharp weapons alongside the blades dancing about his fingers.
That acceptance carries on for several seconds, before he comes back to reality with this accusatory look.
"So it was you who chipped one of my beads."
"Excuse you?" Zanka scrambles. Absolutely catty in incredulous disbelief. "Y'smacked me in the head with it."
"And?"
"And!"
"Y'break it, y'buy it, asshole."
"I'm the victim!"
"My bead is the victim. Y'messed it up. Ain't got no empathy."
Zanka deadpans, "I oughta smack you in the mouth."
"Try it. I'll invoice your whole posse."
Jabber always smells like metal. Metallic in a way that's distinctly him.
Zanka hates that he's wormed his way close enough that his nose recognizes Jabber. But that's neither here nor there.
Still. Metallic.
It's scary in the way it could be a combination of things. None of them particularly smell good. It's something you grow nose blind to when born amongst it. No amount of scrubbing stops sweat dripping down the dip in your spine first thing, no amount of water washes away the dirty grit that clings to every crevice. Even if Zanka pretends he's above it. With Jabber? It could be sweat. Sweat is safe. It could be blood. Scarier, but unsurprising considering the guy wearing it. It could be metal. Now, that's a thought. The metal of Jabber's rings, sexy against even dull light. Or the piercings in his eyebrows, right in the center gaps. His collection of skinny, dangly necklaces. The grills on his canines that Zanka wants to put in his pocket in a way he'd never admit. Or the copious amount of jewelry n his hair.
The braids fall around them both when Jabber pins him, enclosing. For a split second, it's a private space.
That and metal.
Zanka feels like an animal, or something. Obsessed and following tactile breaks in the light with pupils dilating into fat little black holes. Jabber doesn't even need drugs for this reaction, nowadays. His presence, the mutual obsession, is enough to set Zanka's nerves on fire.
Fights aren't supposed to create privacy. They're loud and public and chaotic. Tenfold with them. It's part of their game.
Zanka hates that his brain goes somewhere intimate instead of tactile.
Predators use enclosure.
So do lovers.
What an ugly, ugly overlap.
It's not right, even Zanka can recognize that. He should be calculating leverage. Counting up a million different ways to make Jabber regret their momentary stop-and-stare. Instead, he's noticing every detail of Jabber's face, clear as day. Detailed with symmetrical studs and big pupils and rows and rows and rows.
Jabber feels the shift. He's more sensitive to that stuff than he'll admit.
His head tips a bit closer, deliberate. And Zanka catches micro adjustments in his own breathing. Body preparing for…something. Interwoven enough to recognize the shape of an event, but not the texture. And Zanka wishes he could say he was preparing for impact, wishes this whole thing could make sense. But no, it's enclosure his body predicts. It's embarrassing, catastrophic in every sense. Because that means his brain, silly, stupid, has catalogued this entire thing as a pattern. Jabber's face, Jabber's stupid eyebrow rings, Jabber's proximity.
"What ya lookin' at?" Jabber says like he doesn't have to hold himself differently when he pins Zanka like this. Like he doesn't have to pause, so nothing moves in a way he doesn't want it to. Like that pause isn't intimate whether they like it or not.
Brute force vs. proximity control. And they toe that line with bare feet and hands intertwined.
Worse is that Jabber's not stupid. He knows the toll his stillness, his lingering, his attention takes on Zanka's weary nervous system. There's a closed circuit of space between them, he's distinctly aware of. He knows Zanka knows. Can feel that shift. He lowers deliberately just to watch Zanka squirm, love, squirm under his attention. Buried by the weight. Trying to pretend it's a physical thing. Act like he's staying on the ground because Jabber is on top of him.
Being smacked with a stray braid is one thing.
Getting trapped, another.
Not scrambling to get free in the aftermath? That's worse.
Like this, it's just them and metal, in every sense. And when they're pressed up close everything is louder and eye contact lastsa too long.
And maybe, at that moment, Zanka wonders how much work would make him worth a stray hair.
Jabber lowers and a braid brushes Zanka's cheek, just so.
Absolutely not.
"Get off," Zanka snaps, "y'fat head's blocking my view."