Work Text:
“Come onnnn, babe, just hit me! You’re acting like it is some-”
God, Jabber always runs her mouth. Zanka stares down at her food. She just wanted to eat her sandwich, one of the very few normal dates they had ever gone on. She genuinely thought that, by how pliant she had been on the last date they went on, Jabber had just lain on Zanka's bed for an hour, batting at one of her dread four hours until Zanka turned on music and let Jabber curl up in her lap. She was most definitely high off her mind and using her to trip-sit, but even though she’d never admit it, it was kind of cute. That maybe she would have calmed down a little. But no, here she is, on what was supposed to be just getting dinner together, rubbing her back against Zanka's shoulder like a cat in a head, begging.
“-Great cardinal sin of you!” She dramatically throws her arms in the air, throwing a glance back at Zanka.
“Oh no, I wanted a normal fuckin’ day.”
She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, ignoring the preening woman next to her and getting another bite.
“Finish your food, I paid, and I’ll be damned if ya waste it.”
Jabber glances down at her room sadly before groaning and digging in. Zanka never truly understood the woman's eating habits, but thought it was rude to ask any questions, so she just kept to her own meal.
The woman in question was currently decimating a cardboard container of roast beef, of which she finished in less than a minute because she was shoveling it in her mouth with her hands, and decided to just stare at Zanka.
“Yer so fuckin’ impatient. Would think I’ve been starvin’ you of it fer eons at this point.” Zanka rolls her eyes and wraps the rest of her sandwich in the container, already knowing there is a chance she’ll lose it in the upcoming “fight”. Rather than real spars like they used to have, they just used it to start a scene.
“You have been Zanki!” Jabber wines, leaning closer and whispering into Zanka's ear. “Come on~ hardly even seen my blood on yer hands lately! Startin’ to think ya’ve lost yer touch.”
Zanka fist slams into the woman’s face, she scoffs, and she puts her food in her purse. She regrets not having a leash to put around her pet freak's lovely neck, but she supposes dragging her out of the building with harsh tugs to her dreads will have to work.
After they leave the building, Zanka starts to walk to their regular spot, almost on autopilot. They went there frequently, when either of them needed to blow off some steam, or when Jabber was just in that mood.
Even with the promise of what she wants, Jabber still pants as she walks behind her, one hand on assistaff and the other hand still wrapped around the end of one of her dreads. She can't help a smirk from growing on her face.
“Bet yer hearts just poundin’ in yer chest, huh? Such a pathetic little thing, ya are.”
She can practically hear Jabber biting her lip as she talks, and she can't see it but wants to wipe the stupid expression off her face. “I'd let ya rip it out to check if you wanted.”
She scoffs, and a silence, well, almost, overcomes them the rest of the way there.
“Ten feet start, ya know how it goes.”
She stops moving and uses her hold to practically throw the woman forward, who spins and shakes her body aggressively. Zanka watches the fight enter her eyes as a knowing smirk falls on her enemy's face.
A pink glow envelopes Mankira as she’s activated, and she feels Assitaff practically scream at her to join the fun. Laughing softly to herself, the lovely blue fire envelopes her.
“Mari’s missed ya, ya know?”
Jabber lunges forward, aiming for her chest. Zanka deflects it with a quick half-spin motion from Lovely, and she feels what seems to be small electrical pulses when the vital instruments meet.
Fighting the urge to fall back, she moves it so she has the advantage, pushing against Mankira and moving Jabber back slightly. Jabber looks up at her with a mock-pathetic expression, before grabbing the neck of Assistaff with one clawed hand and spinning behind her, and slashes a deep wound along her back.
“Ya may not want to admit it,” She plunges the blade deeper, taking a moment to move them so each blade slots between a rib. “But I can tell by how y’all’re fightin’ that ya want it.”
Zanka throws her head back and lets out a full-bodied scream, and the tremble in her body doesn’t go unnoticed by Jabber.
“I just know you want to tear in’ta me, ya want to rip me to shreds over and over again until your clothes are more stained by my blood than not.” She whispers into Zanka's ears like they’re sweet nothings, and to them, they might as well be.
In her boasting.. Or flirting, she doesn't notice that Zanka’s mostly conscious again, using one of her legs and the grasp Jabber has on Assistaff to force the staff backwards. A loud crack is heard, and Jabber's eyes roll back for a moment, shouting bloody murder and looking down at her now broken arm with an expression Zanka knows as some twisted version of love.
Which was always something sticky in their terms, something shouted during fights when she hits Jabber just right, something whispered in late-night conversations while they lay together, but what's the use in dealing with feelings when there were other sticky things she could attend to instead?
Jabber's hold on her back loosens, and she fights, making a noise at the loss of sensation, but is instead granted the feeling of blood. The holes are clear in her uniform, she’s sure that this’ll make the walk back home hell, and thick, viscous blood- fuck!
She feels her head start to go black, and she tries to shake it to get rid of the sensation. Jabber should have known better than to puncture a fuckin’ lung this close to the start of their fight! Breathing is hard, and her body screams at her to stop, but after a few moments of standing there and attempting to inflate the popped balloon that was her lungs, she feels it get easier.
“Don't tell me yer quittin'!” Zanka looks over at the women with an expression most would think was pure hatred, but it just spurs Jabber on more.
“darlin’, I'm just getting started.” She places Lovely on the ground and raises an eyebrow, and Jabber rolls her eyes, deactivating Mankira and putting the rings on Assitaff.
Jabber groans, rolling her head back and then looking at Zanka with a bored expression.
“I thought we were gonna have fun today!”
“Since ya wanted it so bad, I think ya can handle doin’ it my way.” Zanka's eyes narrow, and she takes a breath. Things like this were hard for her to get into, to get into the mindset of not having to be the clean-freak perfect example she always has to be with the cleaners.
Jabber always explained it as something with a divine ape, but that felt more like the babblings of a trashed person; to her, it felt much more like going feral. The more blood the better, the more disgustingly animalistic you can be, the more free and therefore yourself you are.
Or at least that was what she knew.
Zanka looks at Jabber, who is standing rather stupidly in front of her, and lunges.
Immediately, they end up on the ground, which coincidentally was where most of their fights ended up in one way or another. Zanka sits on top of Jabber, using one hand to grab the woman's hair and the other to use all of her force and punch her nose in.
She feels Jabber's hand go up her side as she shouts, blood flooding around the surface, and she makes an expression Zanka knows as her going lightheaded. Jabber's fingers trail up her side and work to find the sealing wounds on her chest. Zanka growls at the sensation, sensitive wounds whispering to her. She pulls one of her legs inward to jab at the woman's ribs, but that only serves as a motivator, and she gasps when warm fingers reopen it. The same red color starts to cover Jabber's fingers.
After a moment, she sees Jabber's eyes become clear again, and she watches as Jabber bites her lips, then brings dirtied fingers up to her mouth, using languid licks to clean them. Zanka doesn't miss how some of the blood drips down her face, mixing with the woman's own blood.
It stirs an odd feeling in her, a feeling that manifests in Zanka pulling the woman's head up and meeting her halfway, consuming her mouth in a kiss. If one could call it that, of course, her teeth bite down on the woman beneath her lips, causing a sound to escape her. Exploring deeper, her tongue enters the other woman's mouth; she feels the yellowed teeth, tastes her blood on them, and breathes out sharply. The woman beneath her is stunned for a moment, most of the time it took a lot more teasing and, the whole ‘yes babe I promise that I’m ok with this, yes babe even that yeah-’ talk being had about a billion times more than needed, because little Zanka here has it in her dumb skull that she’d be too much or too rough with her partner. Jabber fights a laugh at that thought, figuring it would kind of ruin the whole having Zanka's tongue in her mouth thing.
She lets out a displeased hum and a sad expression when Zanka backs away on her own, but any quarrels she had quickly go away at the frazzled look on her face and the satisfying color that has formed around her mouth.
“Gettin’ high off of the taste of yer’self man, bet just the sight-”
Zanka’s eyes lock on her Adam's apple, and that's all the warning she gets before she dives, teeth digging into tan flesh. Jabber would have screamed, wanted to keep shit-talking, and would have if not for a disgusting crack-squelch noise that permeates through the air.
"Figure that'll shut ya up." She watches through bleary eyes as Zanka spits out the chunk of her, much to her disappointment, but the blood that trickles down her partner's face, and the mind-numbing, intoxicating pain that threatens to bring her to a place she's been many a time before. Death's door, that is. But as always, death would check her visa, see that she wasn’t a citizen of Hades' realm, and send her back to the land of the living. Negatives were immortality, positives were that because of immortality, her girlfriend got to do stuff like this all the time, and damn if that ain't a good deal.
She gargles, choking on her own blood and making Zanka roll her eyes. Coming closer to the woman again, she glances at her eyes, which seem to be fluttering and looking towards the ceiling, and then at the gaping hole in her throat.
Her mouth connects again with the wound, licking around the edges before dipping her head deeper, tongue exploring her lover's throat, the mixture of iron blood on her tongue and feeling every ridge, makes her sigh in contentment. A shiver is elicited from the woman that is laid before her, and Zanka has to fight the urge to rip apart the flesh once more when the precious organ begins to form again under her teeth.
“Sysifisyan task of getting ya to shut the fuck up.” She laughs to herself, unafraid of ruining the moment, basking in the high her face being covered in her partner's blood is giving her.
Jabber gasps for breath. In her moment, she hadn't noticed the woman had ever stopped to begin with, and lifts herself up slightly on her elbows, looking at Zanka with blown eyes.
“So pretty.” Jabber’s voice catches as she talks, raspy in a way that makes Zanka's face heat up slightly, the mixture of tone and the actual contents of what she was saying making her release an awkward laugh.
She doesn't know how she can rip out her partner's throat without much of a fuss, but the compliment over, presumably, how she looks covered in the mess, seems too much for her. “Fuckin’ freak.”
She doesn't know whether to gently hold the face of her love or slap her for mentioning such a thing while they are in a scene where she's supposed to be all strong and violent.
“Augh.” Deciding to try and keep the mood intact after her prior fuck-up, she scoffs at the woman and stands, feeling the woman's gaze burn up her body as she does so.
She looks down at Jabber, attempting to have her eyes be narrow and what would seem intimidating.
“Come on, baby, whatcha gonna do next, know ya-” Jabber starts, throat having healed up enough for it to seem raspy but mostly normal.
Zanka's foot lands on her neck, a firm pressure she knows will make it slightly harder for her to breathe. “If I didn't want to hear the noises-” She chastises herself when she stumbles over her words, biting down on the side of her mouth and staring down at the bloody mess between her. “If I didn't want to hear the noises ya make when I finally get where I'm wantin’, I'd rip that head off that pretty little neck of yours just to stop yer incessant talkin.”
A shaky noise comes out of Jabber that she can tell isn't just from the airflow issues she's currently having. Zanka reminds herself of the high and takes a breath in before moving her foot lower and, with one precise stomp, breaks a few of her rips.
“I bet ya’d like it. I bet it would just make yer body the pliant little thing it always begs to be when yer not tryna’ piss me off. But we all know that's the reason you do all yer talkin, to piss me off and make it so it’s not yer choice anymore, huh? Well,” She lowers herself again, focusing her weight to make sure Jabber can't move. Or already can't leave, she ensures that her hands are free so she can tap out the pattern if she needs to stop or pause.
“The ball ain't in yer court anymore, Wonger. Yer all mine, to do with as I please.” Moving so her head is next to Jabber's ear, making sure her breath will go down the other woman's neck in the way that always makes goosebumps cover her tanned skin, she whispers to her. “And trust me, doll, I'm gonna use ya till yer sick of me.” Jabber’s face reddens beneath her, and if she said it didn't give her the extra bit of motivation she needed to get into the scene, she would be lying.
Her hand finds Jabber’s scalp.
Her hair was one of the things Zanka loved about her form; the texture was almost sweet against her hands, and it was always such an easy way to control the woman. And Zanka loves control.
Jabber is nowhere near a normal woman, but she prefers not to have much damage done to her head. It was a soft boundary, but regardless, Zanka doesn't feel like crossing it to complete what she initially thought of doing, which was using this grasp to paint the ground beneath them with her partner's brains. "What to do with ya?" She tisks, as if thinking, and then looks into the woman's eyes.
"Hm.. decisions, decisions, I could use the pocket knife in my purse to carve my name into you? Let everyone know who you truly belong to." Something she can't quite do, but based on how Jabber began drooling at that, something that was good to say. She wants to.
Fuck it. Healing factor may make it mean nothing, but she yearns to please; who cares if it won't last at all! She does, an Amount that makes her question briefly if he needs therapy. Jabber will too when she comes down from her high. She's probably going to bitch and moan about it until Zanka makes the jokes about getting her a collar, not jokes.
"So needy," she mutters as she leans over to her bag. The mindset Jabber seemed to always get into when in a more causing pain, specifically to Jabber, rather than the spars that started their relationship. Zanka could practically see the fuzz in Jabber's mind. Pride fills her at that; it always does, and it works out well for both of them. She grabs the small silver knife. Glancing down at it, then at her quite frankly breathtaking partner, she puts it away, rifling through it and grabbing a larger, sheathed black knife from the bottom of her purse. She didn't really need to carry them around, but at the beginning of their relationship, back when it was a sobbing to Chapel Roan situationship, she began collecting knives, wanting to find something that felt like Mankira did on her. It never worked, but this baby always worked the best.
With a sleek, practised motion, the sheath on the floor next to her with a flick of her wrist. She, regrettably, had not thought this far out. Granted, Jabber probably wouldn't mind if she used her chest for this, would probably beg for it if she knew it was an option, but something about having to remove her partner's shirt in the middle of ducking nowhere felt wrong. Her partner's tight-clad thighs catch her attention, and she spins the knife in her hand, a motion she had, embarrassingly, practised to use in a moment very similar to where she was currently.
She takes a breath.
She briefly thinks about just using the blade, letting the tights get damaged as she works, but that's so boring. Dismounting from the woman and sitting on the ground next to her, she takes a breath to try and push away the cringe she feels towards herself, and leans forward and rips it open. Once she gets one ripped, honey skin unrestricted and free from the confines, she goes to the other and takes a moment to feel the texture of it against the woman's thigh before ripping it open. She has to admit that the fact that she can't leave scars on her lover doesn't please her.
Looking down, she starts to feel like she barked a lot more than she can bite here, but damn if she won't try. She runs her hand up the woman's thigh, hair, and scar tissue from before she had gotten her ‘power,’ giving the ridges attention and ruffling the hair as she moves over the flesh.
“Delectable.” She mutters more to herself, her accent making the word feel weird in her mouth.
Pressing the cool blade against skin, she gently rubs the cool metal on the expanse of skin, “Zanki~ You’re boring me!”
Zanka uses her fist to slam the woman's now slightly raised head onto the pavement beneath them. She plunges the knife into one of her thighs, the leg spasms and jerks uncontrollably for a moment as the cut goes deeper than she wanted initially. Questioning for a moment if this is a good idea, she tilts her head to the side, looking as if she's observing the entry point, but she figures if her girlfriend's gonna be a brat, especially as she has been recently, it's probably for the best. She might not be able to fix her partner, nor does she truly want to, but a factory reset via wounds that would kill someone not like them might calm her down. Enough to be tolerable for a week at least. Hopefully.
After she decides, she does look at the new wound she's caused, the blood that gently oozes out from around the black blade, painting tanned skin so prettily, makes Zanka feel like a Victorian gentleman who has just seen an ankle. As she pulls it out, she sees the gleam the liquid causes on it, and how it begins to pool around the entry point.
Making her name out in stabs, while still painful, would look awful. She lines the blade up at the side of the initial wound and slowly works it into a legible Z. At some point, she had to hold Jabber's leg down due to her shaking, but quelled it by simply pressing her leg against the space between her hips and the space in question. Once she zooms out of her focus, she looks at the woman beneath her, whose head is pressed against the ground, eyes sealed tightly. She would be worried if she didn't see the clear smile on the other woman's face, or how her other leg is up and pressing into the ground roughly. Making the rest of her first name out isn't hard, and she gets it done efficiently.
She leans back on her haunches to admire her work. Beautiful, gory, dripping letters sprawl over her thigh, and Zanka can't help but lean down and leave trails of kisses over the wounds.
"Now look who's the pretty one here." Her tone is a lot softer than she would have wanted, and she knows that if Jabber weren't in her fuzzy headspace, she would probably fight her on it. All she gets out of the woman is a pleasured sigh and a slight blush. Zanka may be the one most clearly affected by praise, but in smaller moments, sometimes like this, sometimes in more couple-typical environments, she could see how it affected her more. She hums for a moment, glancing around and noticing just how dark it's getting.
"Clean."
A command. It was something they had started doing recently. Jabber thought it was demeaning, and as expected, she absolutely loved it. It had initially started from one of Jabber's late-night rants about the commonalities between hypnosis and conditioning, and they decided to try some basic things out. Jabber's eyes flutter open and give her that dumb puppy look she secretly adores.
Zanka nods, confirming the command, and Jabber immediately sits up and begins to lick the blood off of her.
She starts with her hands and slowly moves until she gets to her favorite part to clean her lover's face. It wasn't something Zanka loved; it always felt like an oversized cat was trying to groom her, but Jabber had mentioned liking it in the past, so she wasn't going to ruin that for her. Even if the feeling of having slobber on her face is mildly horrific. Zanka knows Jabber has deemed her clean once she backs away.
Zanka can't help but smile at how pleased Jabber looks with himself, and is oddly attracted to the mixture of blood and drool on their face.
"Alright, playtimes over, babe." She stands and tries to ignore how loud her back just cracked, and the pain that came from it, and puts one arm under Jabber's back and another under her knees.
Glancing over at the purse and deactivated assistaff on the ground, she uses the strap and her foot to toss it up, landing on Jabber's torso, and positions her foot at the right place and applies pressure at the bottom of assistaff to make her rise, and she's internally grateful the rings didn't fall off the flames on the side. Struggling for a moment, she gets Mankira onto her own hands and, after having to support Jabber with only an arm and her hip for a moment, slides her vital instrument through one of her belt loops. She walks for a little while before finding a relatively clean alley (aka one that didn't have a dead person already there) and lies Jabber down, putting her purse under her head as a pillow and lying there. A shaky exhale leaves her.
She's nowhere near what someone would consider weak, but that felt horrible. They lie there for a while, and Zanka can hear how Jabber's breathing becomes less ragged; she's coming back down.
"Zanka." Immediately her attention is caught, Jabber hardly ever uses- "That was fucking great."
She laughs weakly and nods her head. "Glad ya liked it, babes."
Hearing shuffling next to her, she doesn't bother to look, feeling tired from the events of the day.
"I mean it. Dude, the whole I own you shit! Cinematic as hell, if you're feeling it, I'm feeling it heavy. Could have been rougher, honestly." This was a ritual they had, although most of the time Zanka would pass out before it, and they'd wait till the next morning. Mostly, it would just be Jabber reassuring in her own fucked up way that, yes, Zanka, you did well, no, Zanka, you doing this doesn't make me hate you, I still love you, yes I would love you if you were a worm, no me crying doesn't mean I wanted you to stop, you did perfectly. It took a long while for Jabber to get used to it, especially the whole not physically fighting back thing, but eventually they found their little harmony. A little bit of fighting to get ready, then Jabber lies back and lets her lovely partner do as she wishes, which is always trying to please her; it's nice. Nice in a way she wasn't really used to, letting her mind wander away, but still knowing she's safe was hard to adjust to. She's always had to live in a state of fight or flight, but it's kind of freeing. Knowing that Zanka would do anything they haven't talked about, knowing that if someone tried to hurt her like that, Zanka would have them as a table decoration before they could lay a finger on her. It felt really good.
She rolls over and is met with Zanka's back, and is not surprised to hear soft snores escaping the lady. The swirls of white and brown hair collect on the alley ground, and she rests for a moment, not bringing anything to lie on, or telling Zanka to get a cheap hotel room at least. She brings her hands around Zanka's midsection, rubbing the fabric of Zanka's pants against the already mostly healed wounds on her thigh. Her mouth finds Zakka's neck, and she leaves small nibbles, placing a kiss over each one. Sleep finds her easily after she finishes her ministries.
She is pulled into the inky black darkness with her lover, and she doesn't think there's a place they'd rather be.
