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Zanka Nijiku is the disgrace of the Nijiku family.
He wasn’t the best in the Hell Guard academy, despite his hard work. He had to study and train, only to fail. It was embarrassing. He isn’t even in the Hell Guard, and he’s also disowned. His siblings don’t want to see him, his father probably hates him, and he doesn’t even know what his mother is up to. To make matters worse, he’s also a giver, which they all despise.
Zanka is probably the disgrace of the Cleaners too.
Not in the ways like how he’s the disgrace of the Nijiku family. With the Cleaners, although he isn’t the strongest, he matches up pretty well with the rest of them. He doesn’t need to be the best, and that’s okay. He does well enough as an Average Joe, takes on and accomplishes missions regularly, and he’s well-liked by the HQ. And Team Akuta is like a family to him, which is a clear bonus.
What makes Zanka a disgrace is that he is laying on his enemy’s bed with his enemy’s arm and leg flung over him to lock him in place, whining about not letting him leave.
It could be worse. Jabber could stick him with Mankira and laugh at his paralyzed body.
“Jabber, get the hell off!” Zanka says uselessly, and struggles in Jabber’s tight grip. “Seriously, I need to go before someone notices I’m gone!”
The thing is, Zanka would like to stay. He’d like to sleep in Jabber’s bed, with Jabber, and the ridiculous scratched-on drawings in Jabber’s room.
But Zanka doesn’t have a car. If Zanka did have a car, Zanka would crash the car, because Enjin insisted on being the one teaching him to drive. This proved disastrous, and left them with a ruined bar, a caved in wall, dents in the car, angry people, and extreme guilt on Zanka’s side when Enjin told him to drive away quickly before anyone noticed it was them.
Because Enjin had deemed it a success, Zanka felt too bad to go behind his back and get taught by anyone else, like Gris.
He could hypothetically ask Jabber to teach him, if not for the fact that Jabber might steer the car into a family of five.
Anyway, since Zanka doesn’t have a car, he can’t stay nearly as long as he wants to, because he needs to get home before Semiu wakes up, so that he can sneak in without her calling him out. Though, he’s pretty sure she knows. He’s definitely sure Shikage knows. Either way, staying could risk him bumping into other Cleaners when he gets back, who’d no doubt interrogate him on his nightly whereabouts, because the Cleaners are a close-knit group of nosy gossipers.
If they find out that Zanka has been seeing Jabber for a while there will be consequences. At best, he’ll be regarded with suspicion —and let’s face it, probably fear for him, seeing as it’s Jabber he’s seeing— and at worst, he’ll get stripped of his job and will never see anyone from the Cleaners again, except for maybe glances in towns and stuff.
Maybe he could settle in Canvas Town. He could probably guilt Remlin into helping him, what with how he almost died because of their prank. He doesn’t actually blame them, but it’s always good to have a plan.
“Man, who cares! Let’s just chill a little more.” Jabber says, unknowing of Zanka’s probable future housing planning.
Zanka sighs, and lays back in defeat. “If any of the Cleaners finds out we probably won’t be able to see each other anymore.” His voice is as factual and monotone as possible.
Jabber tsk’s, and when Zanka drags himself to sit up, he only clings harder to his waist. “Problems for future us, right?”
Zanka puts both his hands on the headboard to attempt to lift himself up completely, instead of responding. He manages to raise himself some centimetres off the bed before Jabber pulls him back down, earning a tiny ‘oomph’.
“Just a few minutes, don’t be boring Zan-zan.”
Zanka doesn’t know if it’s because of those words or because Jabber places a kiss to his hip, but his resolve crumbles in a matter of seconds. Partly in anger, because how dare Jabber call him boring, and partly melting from the little gesture of affection.
Jabber’s teeth don’t bite at his side, but they graze his skin. That’s how Zanka finally caves, flipping Jabber to lay on his back and climb onto him.
“Fine, you freak. Your fault if we can’t see each other anymore.”
Jabber grins up at him, locking their hands together. “You know I’ll find ya either way, Zan-zan.”
“Nah, I’ll head to Canvas Town. Surely they won’t let a freak like you in.” Zanka grins, leaning down. “I’ll stand on the other side of the barrier and laugh at your sorry ass.”
Jabber meets him halfway, and their noses bump together. “Awh, you know you’d miss me too much. I’d find a way.”
It takes a fair amount of self-control in him to not slam the door to Jabber’s mad cackling. Besides self-control, there are also two things that keep him from doing so, one being how they’re in the Raiders HQ and slamming the door would most definitely result in waking up a good few people sleeping in rooms nearby Jabber’s. The second is that both his hands are busy— one with holding Lovely Assistaff, and the other wiping saliva from the back of his ear after Jabber fucking lapped at his ear like a dog.
That freak.
Zanka leaves without even saying goodbye, though that’s pretty normal for the two of them. He leans back against the closed door with a muted thud that he hopes Jabber is too busy giggling to himself to hear. They don’t say goodbye.
Borrowed time, that’s what they’re on.
Zanka is a cleaner and Jabber is a raider, mortal enemies and all that. Jabber has almost killed Zanka multiple times, for fucks sake! Enjin is still hesitant with him when it comes to missions involving raiders, and outright objects to him fighting Jabber because of this. There is absolutely no way their little escapades can last. Zanka sneaking into the Raiders HQ, or the two meeting in discreet spots (never the same more than once) is as much as they can get.
So yeah, borrowed time. Saying goodbye only feels like surrendering to the expectations of their separate organisations (though Jabber claims that Zodyl doesn’t care what he does in his spare time, as long as he gets the missions done, which he always does. Including near-killing Zanka. Yay.). It feels like pushing the slightly opened door fully closed and locking it, blocking it with nailed-in planks and mountains of furniture.
If Zanka or Jabber don’t say goodbye, the door stays slightly open. They can still see each other in the cover of night, or in the shelter of crowds. Too little time.
That alone is enough to make Zanka reach toward the handle of the door again, ready to crawl right back to Jabber. What the hell, right? He’ll already come back way too late to sneak in without anyone noticing.
Speaking of noticing things. He has only just rested his hand on the door handle, ready to push it down and fall back into the room when the door right in front of him opens instead.
The window of time Zanka has to quickly slide into Jabber’s room, or hide behind the opening door or even just run down the hallway is spent completely frozen in position with a horrified look on his face. A definite sign that sleep is needed, if his fight or flight instinct settles on freeze.
Despite what Jabber says —that the raiders genuinely couldn’t give two fucks about each others private lives, and that literally no one cares that he’s there (which Zanka still highly doubts)— Zanka is fully prepared to just jam Lovely into the stomach of whoever comes out of the door when who walks out but-
Oh.
Oh sphere.
Zanka opens his mouth, and nothing comes out. The shocked ‘Bro?!’ doesn’t leave his throat, and the probably shocked ‘Zanka?!’ doesn’t leave Bro Santa’s either. Zanka has Lovely raised still, ready to swing, but he’s too shocked to put it down.
Zanka stares at Bro Santa.
Bro Santa stares at Zanka.
Zanka stares at him.
He stares at him.
They stare at each other.
Eyes just. Locked on each other.
Bodies completely frozen. Like, locked in place.
Zanka wants to die in a hole. A well, even.
They continue to stare at each other. Then, Bro tilts to the side to look behind Zanka and at the door, which helpfully (and unluckily, in Zanka’s current predicament) has Jabber’s nameplate on it, paired together with some drawings scratched into it, no doubt with Mankira. If the door didn’t have Jabber’s name, the fucking poison vile with a skull on it would probably be a dead giveaway.
Anyway, Bro seems to have to reread the name a few times to process who Zanka has been in a room with, because it isn’t until a good ten seconds later that his eyes widen and he winces with his whole body.
Zanka’s neck flushes with embarrassment, and he tilts to the side as well, to read the nameplate of the door that Bro walked out of.
‘Bundus’ it says, and there’s a cowboy hat scratched in Jabber’s ugly (cute) drawing style. Zanka thinks that even without the little reminding drawing, Zanka’s memory could jog well enough.
Bundus is that old guy that Bro and Dear Santa fought in the Trash Beast, according to Bro’s report and Riyo’s ‘catching-Zanka-up-on-shit-(read-gossip)session’.
Zanka can’t even wince like Bro, because like yeah, that makes sense. At least, no one except maybe Zodyl looks old enough to be socially acceptable with Bro.
Then again, it’s not exactly socially acceptable for a cleaner to hang with a raider.
Zanka and Bro lock eyes again. This time, Bro reaches to scratch the back of his neck, almost sheepishly, and clears his throat.
“Need a ride?”
That is how Zanka ends up in Bro Santa’s car, driving from the Raiders HQ back to the Cleaners HQ because for some reason —a specific reason— they were both there.
And yeah, Zanka really needed a ride too, so he should consider himself lucky. He has had to leave in the middle of the night to make it back to HQ before sunlight. He’s lucky that Bro and he left at the same time.
Except now he’s thinking about how many times he might’ve missed Bro being there at the same time as him.
Probably with a car, because he can drive. So he can stay longer with Bundus.
Unfair.
(Thinking of the unfairity of the situation helps drag his mind away from exactly what Bro and Bundus have been doing, because that’s an image Zanka doesn’t want to have implanted in his mind.)
Bro clears his throat again, awkwardly. “So… Jabber.” He says, and Zanka wants to shrink into his seat, regretting that he sat beside Bro in shotgun instead of, like, the backseat or trunk or maybe tying a rope to a random scrap big enough for him to sit on and be dragged by the car.
So far, the only words spoken between them has been ‘Need a ride?’. Zanka had been too stunned to speak, so he had just nodded and they walked to the car in silence. They’ve been sitting in the car in silence for ten minutes, too, long enough for Zanka to think he’d gotten away.
But no.
“Yeah… Jabber.” Zanka responds, and wants to die.
Bro clears his throat again, and Zanka thinks they should stop by a clinic to get cough drops. “That’s an interesting dynamic.”
Yeah, it is. Interestingly absurd.
“You don’t say.” Zanka laughs nervously, leaning toward the window.
“Hasn’t he… tried to kill you?”
“Two times and counting.”
“Huh.”
“Hasn’t your man tried to kill you too?”
“Not really.”
Ooh, lucky guy.
Zanka thinks it’s a thought, but it’s apparently vocalised, seeing as Bro laughs light-heartedly about it. Zanka looks out the window for a well.
“You know, when I was a young man like you,” Bro starts, and Zanka reaches for his own throat as he starts swinging back and forth, mouth open in a silent scream, wishing he could strangle himself. When Bro looks back at him, it’s like he hasn’t done anything at all. “I also liked the bad boys.”
Bro laughs again, and then continues to talk, much to Zanka’s dismay.
“There’s always something so thrilling about a guy that does his own thing, who doesn’t care about rules. I had a man when I was about your age, maybe some years older, and he’d get in trouble with local authorities all the time, just for the fun of it! We had a lot of fun together, if you know what I mean?”
He winks at Zanka.
This is it. This is what kills him.
Bro laughs, maybe at his own words, maybe at Zanka’s probably obvious embarrassment.
“Good times! Good times…” He trails off, and starts to stare off into the distance.
Zanka doesn’t start to count the seconds until after a number has already passed, but he gets to twenty until he starts to nudge Bro.
“Uh, Bro? You good?”
Bro is unresponsive, and Zanka thinks there are two possible reasons. One, he could be having some health issue, like old people do sometimes. His grandfather used to have health issues, but Zanka doesn’t think that Bro is at that age yet.
Probably.
The other reason is that Bro is having some sort of flashback. Probably about his bad boy. Definitely about his bad boy.
Zanka looks back at the road, and immediately panics because shit there’s a curve. There hasn’t been a curve during Bro’s flashback-ing, only a straight road, but now there’s a curve and Bro is unresponsive.
Like said previously, Zanka panics.
“Bro! Hey, Bro!” Zanka starts to shake Bro as much as he can, attention divided by his fellow cleaner and the oncoming building they’ll be driving into.
“Bro!”
Zanka decides that he doesn’t want to die easily, so he throws himself onto the wheel and turns it violently enough that Bro is drawn back from his flashback.
He takes charge again, and steadies the swerving car.
“Woah! That was weird!” Bro laughs, and Zanka stares at him in disbelief, still half thrown toward the wheel. “Where was I? Right!”
Zanka looks back at the road, relieved to see that the only building they’ll risk crashing into now is the Cleaners HQ and not a random civilian's home, since no town stands between them. The thought comforts him enough to sit straight and just accept his fate of listening to Bro talk about bad boys.
“But, Zanka… as much fun as he was, and as fun as we had, it ended pretty badly as far as break-ups go.”
Zanka sees where this is going, and thinks he should’ve let them crash.
Bro clears his throat for like the hundredth time, and continues. “These bad boys, they’re only here for fun. Even if you think you can change a guy, you’re usually wrong. It’s not worth the effort.”
Bro glances at Zanka, who pointedly looks away.
“It seems like Jabber’s a bad boy, Zanka. With the drugs and the violence and all that. I don’t want you to go through the same pain as I’ve been through.”
Man, now that Bro says it so sincerely, Zanka feels bad for wishing hurt upon the both of them. He kind of sounds fatherly, in the way Zanka missed in his childhood. His worry is sweet. Misguided, but definitely sweet.
“He ain’t a bad boy. He’s a bad guy, sure, but not like that. He’s…” Zanka, embarrassingly enough, feels himself flush, thinking about how to describe Jabber. “He’s weird, that’s all. Absolutely insane, and crazy obsessed with fighting. He likes pain to a creepy level, and sometimes I find him lying on the floor high as shit, listening to weird-ass music, which is weird as fuck but-.”
But Jabber scratched a drawing of stick-figure-Zanka and stick-figure-Jabber holding hands with a heart surrounding them into his bed frame. Jabber let Zanka hold Mankira whilst he fixed up the earring that broke on a mission. Jabber randomly read a book Zanka loves because he heard him mention it once so they could discuss it. Jabber lets Zanka patch him up after fights to soothe his (Zanka’s) guilt, despite preferring to let them fester for a bit.
“He’s sweet.” Zanka finishes, squirming in his seat a little.
And he really is, despite all his weird attributes. He understands Zanka.
Bro eyes him a little wearily, but looks back at the road. “As long as you’re sure.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“I believe you.” Bro smiles at him, and Zanka’s responsive smile is small and wobbly, but it does the job. “Besides, I’m doing the same thing as you, aren’t I?”
Bro laughs again. He’s laughed so many times that Zanka’s sleep-deprived brain tries to convince him that there’s a secret third person whispering jokes into Bro’s ear, and starts to feel a FOMO kicking in.
It’s comforting, though. Zanka likes Bro’s laugh, he thinks.
“Bundus ain’t the exact same as your man, but he’s a whole lot of something, too!”
Zanka tries to listen as intently as he can, as Bro goes on about Bundus.
Bundus is funny, apparently. Bundus has smile lines visible beneath his moustache, if you’re close enough. To Bro, it looks like Bundus has central heterochromia, but he can’t be sure. Bundus is honest, and sincere. He’s easy to talk to, and flirts smoothly. Bundus is muscular, obviously, and he has scars in places underneath his clothes that Zanka doesn’t want to think about Bro finding. Bundus laughs really loudly when he thinks something is funny, and the notes go from deep to high to a wheeze at the end.
These are things that Bro notices about Bundus. But then there’s also what Bundus does. His actions. When Bro speaks about this, his voice is quieter, softer.
Zanka can relate.
Bundus is sweet, too, Bro says. Bundus hung up a drawing Dear made that Bro accidentally took with him on his wall. Bundus tries to teach Bro guitar, and only smiles and corrects him when he does wrong. Bundus is careful not to touch Bro’s headband unless permission is granted. Bundus usually sticks to his own favourite foods or drinks, but has gone out of his way to add things that Bro likes into the Raiders HQ’s fridge, with a mildly threatening note of possession.
When Bro tells him the content of the note, saying it in a voice to sound like Bundus, Zanka really does laugh.
“Did he write it in that accent too?” He asks, to which Bro laughs.
“Yeah, he said they wouldn’t mess with it if he wrote it in his ‘serious voice’.” Bro shakes his head fondly, smiling.
“Clearly, he’s underestimating Jabber’s self-control.”
“Oooh, I’ve been a victim of your man’s self control a few times.”
All in all, it’s a good car-ride, despite the almost-crash. It’s kind of fun to talk to Bro, too. To listen to him talk about Bundus in that tone. It’s romantic, even.
In turn, Zanka gets to tell Bro about Jabber, too.
He tells him that Jabber has a weird, manic laugh when it’s big, but that his chuckles hitches when they’re small and quiet. He says that Jabber does regular maintenance for Mankira, like Zanka does with Lovely. He talks about how Jabber touches Lovely with reverence, making sure to prop her up against the wall. How Jabber is crafty with metal things like his hair cuffs and Zanka’s earrings, but also how he especially loves to experiment with poisons and venoms, and how he makes some with Zanka in mind.
Zanka tells Bro about Jabber’s weird habits, the shenanigans he animatedly tells Zanka once they meet, how Jabber is learning to give and receive affection, despite however hard it had been for them in the beginning.
It’s nice.
The next day Zanka tries to sneak out, Bro is leaning against the wall with a grin, car-keys shown off.
“Need a ride?”
“Yeah, I could use one.” Zanka responds (this time).
They talk on the car-ride, stopping once for a light snack, and go their separate ways once they reach the Raiders HQ. Bro walks through the front door, but Zanka would feel mortified to go in there when it’s still early enough that raiders could still be in the common area, so he climbs through Jabber’s window, and just lays on his bed until his man decides to show up, tracing the little drawing on the bedframe with his fingers and a smile.
Jabber, for one, is exhilarated by seeing Zanka there earlier than usual, and literally pounces on him. Jabber looks like Zanka has hung the sun, stars and moon when Zanka tells him that he can stay for a bit longer from now on.
———————————EXTRA———————————
Jabber laughs into the now empty room. Oh, how he loves to see Zanka’s furious expression. He could stare at it for days on end if only- well, if only he could.
If only he could see Zanka everyday, which he can’t.
The thought makes him sad, and he feels like chasing after Zanka, but his man would probably only get grumpy if Jabber pulled him back for more time.
Jabber pouts theatrically to no one but the roof. He’s still lying on the bed, and tilts his head back to see the little figures drawn onto the headboard.
‘That looks fucking shit.’ Zanka had said when Jabber had shown it to him, and he gets giddy at the thought. Zanka had said it in that way, the stuck-up-princess-of-the-ground-sphere-and-everything way that Jabber loves, but he’d also blushed furiously in a way that Jabber also loves.
He could get some sleep. Let a red-flushed image of Zanka take him to dreamland and sleep the day away, but Jabber isn’t sleepy at all.
Instead, he gets out of his room and makes his way to the kitchen, ready to grab just about anything.
Once he opens the fridge, he’s greeted by Bundus’ funny little note stuck to a lunch box. Naturally, he takes it. Usually he puts a harmless poison in it, but right now he just wants some food to cure his boredom, rather than going down to his lab in the basement and cooking up some real fun stuff.
“Put Bundus’ food back, Jabber.”
Jabber jumps, as he turns around to find Cthoni halfway through her manhole. “Shit, ‘Toni, you gotta stop just appearing like that! Dying of a heart attack ain’t as fun as it sounds!” Jabber complains. He should know he’s tried it. 3/10 pain, he prefers the bruises his man gives him.
“You should be more aware of your surroundings. Maybe Bundus would’ve caught you messing with his food this time.”
“Man, if Bundus caught me I’d hear his loudass footsteps like a gazillion miles away!”
Cthoni doesn’t respond as she grabs a glas from the cupboard.
Watching her, Jabber leans back into the counter with his thinking-pout on. “Where’d you get back from, yo?”
“Cleaners headquarters.”
“Cleaners HQ? MAN, I wanna go there too! I miss my man!” Jabber pushes himself away from the counter, trying to catch Cthoni’s hands. She dodges him, so he clasps his hands in front of him. “You’ll take ya boy with ya next time, right? Come on, I won’t do nothing bad!”
Cthoni scoffs. “Yeah, in your dreams. I’m not violating Semiu’s trust like that.”
“Pfft, trust, schmust, she’ll understand!”
“Get away from me. And put Bundus’ food back!”