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“I thought it was Follo!”
Enjin raked a hand through his hair hard enough to disturb the careful lines of it, boots striking the corridor floor in quick, directionless beats. He wasn't sure where he would go, maybe outside, maybe on a loooong walk out into No Mans Land and then just keep going.
“Why the fuck would it have been Follo?”
Zanka hurried after him, which only made Enjin’s distress multiply. The boy was still tying his jinbei closed, fingers fumbling at the sash in the same agitated rhythm Enjin kept dragging through his own hair.
“Follo’s a nice guy!”
They were far too loud for this hour. Any second now someone would throw a door open and tell them to shut up. Enjin couldn’t have lowered his voice if his life depended on it.
It wasn’t necessarily anger clawing at the inside of his ribs… so much as it was fear.
There it was. The right word. Heavy and humiliating.
He was scared. For Zanka.
Seventeen was too damn young to be tangled in something that complicated.
Something like Jabber.
In hindsight, he should never have opened that door. Should never have teased. Especially not knowing exactly what teenagers did at two in the morning when left unwatched. Hell, what had he been doing at that age? Probably worse, if he was being honest.
Still.
He had been making his usual rounds before bed. Riyo tucked in under her blankets, even if the CD player on her desk still blared Too Lily into the dark. Rudo took a moment to find, curled beneath his bed like some stray who trusted the space under wood more than the open air. Strange habit the kid had, but Enjin assumed he just felt a little safer under there and who was he to mock that.
Zanka, though, hadn’t even been on the checklist. Just a walk by glance to make sure the lights were out. Pointless, really. Zanka was normally asleep by ten, up before sunrise to train.
The lights were off. The door was shut tight. He almost walked past without slowing.
The sound of Assistaff knocking against the floor stopped him mid-step.
He knew that sound the way a sailor knows the groan of his own ship. Sharp wood striking concrete walls. Repeated so often over the years it had etched itself into his own muscle memory. But Assistaff should have been sealed in her glass case for the night, cleaned and dormant. Zanka should have been asleep.
Enjin’s first thought was training.
Of course it was. The boy had never met a limit he didn’t try to outpace. It would not have been the first time he’d slipped in extra drills after curfew, and it certainly would not be the last. Zanka treated effort like a debt that could never quite be paid off. There was always more to give. Always one more strike to perfect.
Then came the sound that unraveled that theory entirely.
A moan. Soft. Muffled through the door.
Followed by whispering.
Enjin brightened like sunrise spilling over the Wasteland.
His little Zanzan. Acting like a teenager for once in his stubborn, self-sacrificing life. Breaking whatever imaginary curfew everyone swore existed but no one ever bothered enforcing.
It had to be the mystery boyfriend. The shameful little secret Zanka refused to name out loud. The one Enjin had been trying to coax out of him since unhidable bite marks started showing up all over his body.
Enjin should have knocked.
Should have called through the door with something teasing and harmless. Should have walked away before curiosity dug its claws in.
Should have.
Instead, he leaned in, two fingers pressing to the wood and pushed it open.
“Now, I don’t want to embarrass anyone, but if you’re going to make that much noise in…” The words died in his throat and this image would be burned into his brain until the day he died.
Zanka, shirtless. Flushed. Back pressed to the wall, Assistaff gripped uselessly in one hand.
Jabber, very fucking much not Follo or any other Cleaner, very much shirtless as well, very much doing things with his mouth against Zankas chest that Enjin did not care to consider ever again.
There had been a beat of silence, where all three of them had gone deathly still, all with violently different reactions.
Then Jabber had turned his head slowly, lazily, like a cat disturbed mid-meal. Eyes half-lidded. Mouth curved.
“Evening, tattoos.”
Zanka had made a sound Enjin had never heard leave a human throat before and attempted to shove Jabber away so fast they’d both nearly fallen over.
Enjin closed his eyes now as he stormed down the hall, as if physical pressure could squeeze the memory out of existence…It could not.
“Oh my God, it could have been anyone else. It could have been August. It could have been Tamsy.” He would have been far far less stressed. He would have found a way to poke fun and move the hell on from this. But no, Zanka had to pick the raider. Of course he had too.
“Are you intentionally picking the worst possible options??” Zanka scoffed, but was completely ignored.
“You picked the crack head…” Despair was so loud in his tone now.
“We were didn't do anything!” Zanka shot back, mortified beyond measure. “It was just-”
“Do not finish that sentence!”
A door down the hall creaked open.
“Shut up!” someone hissed, Bro, but Enjin didn't bother glancing back to look.
Seventeen.
Seventeen and lethal in every sense of the word but still seventeen. Still soft in the places that mattered. Still the kid who had once fallen asleep at the kitchen table with rice stuck to his cheek.
And Jabber-
Jabber was the embodiment of rot, a concept given teeth and claws.
Wild. Violent. Reckless in ways Enjin understood too well.
“Enjin, please,” Zanka muttered, and there was something new in his voice now. Not embarrassment. Not exactly. Something heavier. Fear of losing ground.
He caught Enjin’s sleeve. Not to restrain him. Just enough to stop him from walking straight through the exit door and into the night like a man fleeing a burning building.
The touch made Enjin falter.
He turned.
Zanka’s hair was still mussed. Lips red. Jinbei tied crooked.
There was a dark, angry mark blooming along his collarbone.
Enjin inhaled sharply through his teeth, heart breaking a new way he had never experienced. Where had the time gone? When had this broad-shouldered young man replaced the child he’d once hauled from the bottom of a well, trembling and furious at the world?
Fear settled deeper.
Not because Zanka looked hurt, but because he didn't. And that was somehow worse.
Zanka's hand dropped from Enjin’s sleeve now that they were both stopped, and Enjin raked a hand through his hair. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” His voice cracked, a mixture of fury, disbelief, and raw, undisguised fear. “Do you even know what that - that thing - could cost you?”
Zanka’s jaw tightened. “I know exactly what it costs,” he said quietly, voice low but steady, and for a moment Enjin thought he might break under the calm. “I’ve thought about it. Every risk. Every-” He stopped himself, swallowed, looked down at the floor as if saying it aloud would make it too real to swallow. “-everything. I’m not asking you to approve. I’m just… telling you.”
Enjin’s heart knotted, fingers curling so tight into his palms he thought he might bleed “I don’t approve. You can’t-” He swallowed, tugging on the thread of reason like it might anchor him. “There are other options. Safe options. You have a laundry list of guys that worship the ground you walk on! You could avoid this completely!”
Zanka’s eyes flicked up, sharp and steady. “Avoid this? Enjin… you know that’s not who I am.” His lips quivered, but he didn’t back down. “You know me. You know I can't walk away from something I've already started.”
Enjin’s chest tightened, breath shallow. He knew that tone, he’d heard it in his own reflection in the mirror years and years ago. Fuck, somtimes he still heared it at his old ass age. “You’re seventeen, Zanzan. Seventeen! And I- God, I’ve made my own mistakes, I get it. Awful, awful mistakes. But I survived because I was lucky. ONLY lucky. You… I can’t-”
“You can’t stop my heart,” Zanka said softly, almost tenderly. “I dont need you to protect me right now. Not with this.”
Enjin’s hands fell to his sides, helpless. All the clever speeches, all the bargaining, scattered like dust. He could only watch. And pray.
“You’ve made your choice?” Enjin could barley get the words out around all that emotion. “Theres nothing I can say? Nothing to change your mind?”
Zanka nodded gently, eyes shiny in the dim light of a cherry red exit sign, but hardened in a way that Enjin knew far too well.
Enjin’s chest tightened in a way that told him a new kind of grief was setting in. He could feel it, the absence of something he hadn’t realized had left him. The boy he thought he knew, the one who had curled up under his arm with wide wondrous eyes, the one who had begged him for war story after war story… that boy was gone.
He hadn’t noticed, not really. He had assumed the child was still there, somewhere beneath the scowl and the discipline, under the stubborn pride and the growing strength. But he was wrong. The moment Zanka had stepped closer, jaw set, eyes unflinching, the soft edge of the boy he’d cheered on in kitchens and training halls had vanished.
It wasn’t just the fight. Not just the recklessness or the teeth of the decision. It was the realization that the little Zanzan who had once looked at him for help, who had whispered secrets and worked for approval, had silently folded himself into the man who now stood before him. A man who could choose, who could want, who could stand on his own two feet without help.
Enjin mourned without meaning to. Quietly, bitterly, like the soft dragging of wind across barren stone. He had lost the child without ever knowing he’d been keeping him alive in memory. And that absence… cold and jagged… cut sharper than any danger Zanka could face tonight.
He pressed a hand to his chest, wishing fiercely he could turn back time, hold onto that boy in his memory a little longer, even as he knew it would have been pointless. That child was gone. Only Zanka remained. Strong and utterly unyielding.
“Theres going to be rules. Zanka, I'm serious. If you don't want Corvus to find out about this, theres going to be rules about letting in a-” Dirty, perverted, violent “-raider into the headquarters."
Honestly, he had zero authority to be giving rules right now. On all fronts, he was not Zanka’s father. Not in any official capacity. Not even in a moral one, really. And as team lead, he should have reported this immediately. Probably should have restrained both of them for questioning. But that was never going to happen and they both of them knew it.
Still, Zanka nodded, feverishly, more for Enjin’s sake than his own.
“You have to communicate with me every single time he shows up,” Enjin continued, voice rising like a cornered alarm bell. “That’s not a suggestion. I mean it.” He jabbed a finger at Zanka, furiously, as if sheer willpower could etch it into his stubborn skull.
“I will. I swear. I-i-it’s not every night, and he’s never gone any further than my room. I would never-”
“Don’t.” Enjin drew a long, shuddering breath. “I know you wouldn’t risk the others. But you would risk yourself. And that… that’s the problem.”
The words hung in the hallway, heavy as smoke, sharper than any threat. Zanka’s gaze dropped, chin trembling just enough for Enjin’s chest to ache. He wanted to smooth it away, to make it lighter, to negotiate like he always did. But he knew: hearts once made didn’t bend to reason.
Enjin let out a long, shuddering breath and stepped closer, closing the small gap between them. He didn’t wait for permission, usually didn't need it anyway, and wrapped his arms around Zankas shoulders, holding tight as if he could keep the world from stealing anymore time from him.
“You hear me, Zanzan?” he murmured into his hair. “I don’t care about the mess, the secrets, the risks… none of it. You still mean everything to me. Every single thing.”
Zanka’s body stiffened at first, trembling under the weight of Enjin’s arms, then slowly melted into him, the tension cracking into quiet sobs he hadn’t meant to let slip.
“I… I don’t want to make you worry,” Zanka whispered, voice muffled.
“You will always worry me,” Enjin said softly, brushing a hand through his hair, thumb stroking a circle on the back of his head. “And I’ll always have your back. As long as you keep me in the loop, no matter what… I’m here. Always. You’re not alone in this.”
Zanka’s tears soaked into Enjin’s chest, warm and urgent, and he held him tighter, letting him cry. A boy once carried, now a man in small, stubborn defiance, and yet still Zanzan.
The hallway felt impossibly quiet after the storm of words and fear, broken only by their shared breaths. Enjin rested his chin atop Zanka’s head, letting himself savor the small, fragile relief in the grip of the moment.
“Promise me,” Enjin murmured, voice low but certain.
“I promise,” Zanka whispered back, and this time the words felt like a bridge between them, an absolute in a world of rubble and waste.