Chapter Text
The scent of peach and vanilla, old books and leather, the lights soft and the words flowing along with the scents through the air, kind and amused.
“Can Amo do Bee’s feet? After Amo’s done with his hands?” She holds his hand in her pale one, the skin smooth and wet, black polish on the man's nails.
Around them, a plethora of various self-care products are scattered on the floor. Jabber currently sits on the floor of Amo’s room, a Hello Kitty branded face mask on his face, Amo with a Keroppi on her own.
Jabber chuckles, his other hand that has been painted already absentmindedly fidgeting with the cushions that are laid out on Amo’s floor. “If you want to,”
It was a small tradition, their little sleepovers that is, after a rough week (every week), or when Amo is, as jabber would say, ‘tweaking’, they either go out and get snacks and self-care things, or they use some of their stockpile. Today was a result of the first one.
Amo’s hands are careful, the persistent slight shake still there, but she’s calm enough that the small amounts of polish that get on his skin during the moments when she twitches slightly aren't as frequent. He remembers when she had more issues with it, and them using some cheap polish and playing like nail technicians, with silly voices and getting paint all over their hands.
A smile graces her face, and she always glows when she smiles.
Her hands are cool as she makes sure she covers all of the surface area, humming along with the music that's coming from the small speaker on the floor next to them, lost amongst all of the random shit they've collected.
“So, what do you want me to do for yours?” Jabber asks, tilting his head at her.
“Amo is cool with whatever!” He laughs at that, a small quiet thing as he looks over the various nail polishes she has out.
He hums and nods his head, and after a few moments, Amo is done with the rest of his nails.
Grabbing an orange and a brown color, he, very carefully, opens them and puts his knee up, motioning for her to put her hand on it. He makes thin layers of the colors, alternating for each finger.
“Freak that shit out,” He says, standing up and helping her. He turns the audio of their music up with his foot, and Amo holds her hands out, closing her eyes, jumping, and shaking her hands while she attempts, and fails, to sing along with the heavy music. Jabber follows along; his polish is quick-dry and is probably already done, but hey, what hurt can it do?
Amo’s hair smacks jabber in the face on one of her attempts to shake her head aggressively, and he successfully apapapappffftts the hair out of his mouth, and after a few more seconds, Amo stops. She uses her hand to support herself against the table behind her, and her breathing is heavy.
“Amo is very dizzy! Her heart feels fast!” She sounds elated, and he smiles, leaning his back against her bed, and then sitting back down in his spot. Amo follows a moment later.
“Aight, gimmie your hands back; this is gonna look- uh. Imma try my best!” He makes a silly voice as he continues on, and Amo is still slightly moving back and forth as she puts her hand back.
Jabber opens the bottles again, and allows a drop of the opposite color to land on it, forming a circle on top of her nail.
“Amo thinks it looks pretty,” She says after he gets done applying it. There are some spots where it's smudged, but eh, he's just a guy. You think anyone's gonna be able to do better? No.
“Of course. I always knew it was gonna be great.” He says, eyes wide and looking around the room like he's trying to avoid suspicion, and tone wavering slightly. Amo giggles.
Amo tugs at his sock, probably wanting to get started giving him a pedicure. He looks down at her and raises his brows, planting his foot firmly on the ground.
“Can Amo paint your nails?” She asks after a second, and he nods, laughing for a second, and he takes off his socks, flinging them across the room into her hamper, and throwing his hands above his head when he hits.
“Jabber’s peak,” He says, hands going outward and a shit-eating smile on his face.
She giggles and looks over the collection of polishes.
“Does Bee want them to match his hands?”
“Lowkey. Do we think that I would look pretty in pink?”
Amo smiles, that pretty thing where her teeth are bared in a way you can tell is unrehearsed.
“Amo knows Bee’s pretty in pink hehe!” She looks around and sorts out a few, one sparkly, one hot pink, a pastel, and a medium.
Jabber picks up the hot pink one, handing it to her. She’s happy as she backs up, lowering herself to the ground to try and focus. There are still some remnants of last week, but she thinks that it will be thick enough to not matter. Plus, pink and black would look pretty together anyways!
Amo gets started, and he’s amused by- all of this. He showered like once a month at gas stations before he joined the Cleaners. Now he has a skincare routine and doesn't stink of shit? His nails are clipped! He used to just rip them off; people at work were so boring, the pain in his feet was just something that helped at that point. But it's silly, he thinks. Amo and Jabber basically just looked up a list of what people do at sleepovers and made that a checklist. Both of them similar and yet so different.
“Beebee?” Amo looks up after she's mostly done, head slightly tilted.
“Wasup bro?”
He snaps out of his internal monologue and smiles, and she shakes her head, brushing it off.
“So, do you want me to do yours after this?” He asks after a moment.
Amo makes a face, flinching back a little.
“M- Beebee doesn't have to,” She shakes her head.
He narrows his eyes and sees she’s done, pulling his knees up to his chest. Glancing over, he sees she has her booted feet still tucked under herself.
“Ah, well, that ain’t what I asked, but if you don’t wanna, that's aight,” He says as he stands up, taking Mankira off and placing her on the table next to the door.
He knows Amo doesn't like things involved with that, so he isn't going to push it. However, if there's something wrong, or if she wants an opportunity to bond further, he wants to make sure she’s got some trust.
“Hm,” Amo hums, a little squeak almost as she looks at the motion.
“Yo, Am’s, can I sit on your bed?”
She nods her head, and he walks over, ploping himself down and letting his legs dangle off of the edge, and humming something to himself.
“What do ya wanna do next?” He asks as he looks over at her, lying back on the bed.
Amo stands up, looking at him for a second before walking around her room, bouncing slightly with the music. “Amo knows BeeBee ate some of her cookie dough. Did he eat all of it?
Curse her and having a good sense of smell. A few nights ago him and Zanka.. Destressed after a mission, though Jabber’s favorite plant, a common side effect being feeling like a black hole.
“There should be like, half of it.?-”
“Beebee! I made five POUNDS!”
He raises his head, eyes in a way Zanka’s past describes as a guilty dog.
“My bad.”
“Beebee,” She whines, looking down at him. He groans and stands up.
“There ain't nothin’ better than the penjamin and absolutely decimating something. You should have seen how Enjin reacted when the chips he can only get in Canvas Town were entirely gone the next morning.”
“Amo knows he was angry,” She starts to walk to the door, Jabber following closely behind. They wander down to the kitchen, most of the lights in the base turned off, and the few that are on being the much more dim lights that jabber can never remember a time when they weren't flickering messes. There are a series of fridges and freezers; it's a requirement to have enough food to feed the cleaners daily, so needless to say that takes some stocking up. However, a few weeks ago Amo bought some cookie dough in bulk because she wanted to be able to have a sweet treat. She had a little name written on it in permanent marker and everything; that did not stop jabber.
Amo wanders over to the freezer she left it in, and pulls out the container.
“Beebee,” She says, the start of a command (she's gotten awfully good at that; Zanka’s a great role model for her, do no harm, take no shit. Jabber has to remember to make sure Amo isn't in the room the next time the Nijikus decide to visit, Zankas reacion wont be healthy, and we don't need to teach her that.) that is vaguely directed toward the oven, so he walks over and clicks bake, the bright neon numbers flashing to tell him to choose a temperature.
“350?” He questions, already setting it to that.
“Yeah, that's good!”
“Okie!” He finishes that, and then turns back around; Amo has pulled out a sheet and is placing little pieces of dough onto it.
It looks very good.
“I'm.. uh. I think it's silly that you're more dedicated to bakin’ knowledge-”
“Bacon knowledge.”
He looks over at her.
“BaKING”
“Who on earth have I exposed you to that's brainrotted?”
She pops her hand on her hip, a look on her face that he's seen so many times before, normally with a comment about how he's a freak attached. It’s so neat how she, like, shows traits of him and Zanka, even though they aren't her biological parents.
“Beebee. You're brainrotted.”
“Wha- n- fuck. Bro. You're right, and if Zanka EVER hears you say some of the shit I do, I think she's gonna beat my ass.”
She looks at him with an odd expression, and her ears move.
“Mama said Jabber doesn't talk about that with Amo.”
He returns her weird expression as he loads.
“No! Amo, wrong- thing! Like, when you do something wrong, and you know someone's gonna be angry, and like, yell, that's when you say they’re gonna beat your ass. I don't mean literally. ‘Ppreciate you called me out on that though, if someone says something that makes you uncomfortable,- fuck i was bout to say beat they ass but I- not literally.” He runs a hand down his face. “Do you get what I'm saying, Amo.”
Amo’s face is entirely blank, which worries him for a moment before her face cracks and she bursts out laughing.
“Amo knew! Amo knew it was a joke; she played a- a, prank! Funny thing! She did it right, right?”
Jabber wants to be mad. He wants to be like, gang, we can't make jokes about things that are serious like boundaries.
“Good job! You got my ass!” He laughs after a moment, walking over to her and smacking her on the shoulder gently. A sigh tears through him, and he looks over at her.
“How long we gotta wait for these things?” Most of the time he can tell just by smelling them, and in the times he can't, he just touches whatever it is to test (Zanka was very angry when he was trying something with his chemistry set and tried this. His chemical burns weren't even that bad; she’s overreacting.)
Amo tilts her head slightly, thinking, before responding, voice small and adorable, “With how small they are, only a few minutes!”
He nods his head and leans back slightly, “Okay.”
Jabber hops up onto the island and raises his hands up.
“Amo, pattycake,”
Amo beams at him, and they play until Jabber’s head snaps over to look at the oven, tossing himself off of the island and taking the cookies out of the oven.
He rubs his slightly red hand on his side as he turns the oven off, looking over at Amo with a grin.
“Mr. Jabber, they look beautiful!”
He grins and holds out a hand, which she takes; he spins her, her dress flaring out as she giggles with the movement. Her twirls get faster until she holds a hand out, her head spinning as Jabber picks her up.
“I would say we’ve done a pretty good job, huh, Ms. Amo?”
Her head sways slightly from side to side as she laughs, her head nodding up and down in his grasp.
“Mhmh!”
A smile falls onto his face, and he walks around the kitchen for a minute, going in loops around the island as Amo’s laughter dies down. Eventually he sets her down, and he points up to a cabinet, and she grabs a plate that he quickly moves them to.
“So, what we feelin’ now?”
Amo hums, “Do you think Ms. Zanka and Rudo would like them?”
He smiles and picks up the plate.
“Hit Zanka’s room then his?”
Amo nods her head and reaches for his hand, grabbing Jabber’s wrist and leading the way while humming some little tune that is sure to cheer people up.
Jabber opens the door, “Heeee-” A hand covers his mouth, and he blinks in confusion at Zanka, then holds the plate out.
“Shut the fuck up,” She whispers, and he leans over, seeing Rudo, hands bandaged and plasters patched over his skin, curled up on the ground next to her bed.
He raises a brow and pulls the wrist Amo is on, signalling for her to move to his other side.
“What's up?” Jabber whispers back, watching as Zanka picks up a cookie and takes a bite.
“We trained; he got some blood on his gloves. We are cleaning them. He needed some support. Say what you need to and get out.”
He looks back over and sees that he’s snoring slightly.
“Take a cookie for him when he wakes up, Amo. Got any notes for your boytoy?”
“Tell him, if he needs anything, Amo’s here!”
Zanka nods, looks at Jabber for a second, eyes narrowing, before she grabs his collar and kisses him. She then shoves him away, grabs another, and closes the door in jabbers face.
“Well, that was something,” Jabber says as he starts walking back to Amo’s room, who takes one from the plate and starts nibbling on it as they walk back.
“Mhm! Ms. Zanka’s really nice,” Amo nods her head, eventually opening her door.
She’s.. Been familiar with their relationship for a while, and has understood their weird little insult- ‘oh you wanna kiss me so bad ’-dynamic. There was an instance where she took something from Zanka when she was arguing with him, and used it on Enjin. Needless to say, it ended with a tense conversation and her having to say sorry.
“Yeah, she is.” He moves to sit on the floor again, putting the plate on her dresser and taking one, taking a bite and nodding.
“We did really well,” He mentions as Amo walks over and sits against the dresser.
A hum escapes her as her head bobbles.
“Mhm! Thank you, Bee!”
“Of course, girlygirl.”
A breath leaves him, and he yawns.
“So what are we wanting to do now?” Jabber looks over at her, who's following in his lead and yawning.
“Sleep?”
Jabber nods his head.
“What are you feeling, then- want touch or no?” He tilts his head slightly.
She waves her hand for Jabber to go lay down, and he does, sitting and then rolling over on the bed till he's in the middle, as Amo takes her shoes off carefully, placing them next to where Manira is lying gently. She hops up, snuggling herself under the blanket before reaching down to the foot of the bed to pick up a small white rabbit plush.
“Turn,” she points over at the wall, “that way.” He does and can feel her forehead against his back as she hugs the plush.
“Good night, Ms. Amo.”
He can hear her giggle and press her head against him with more force.
“Night Beebee!”
Hm, two uniquely yet similarly fucked up people. They aren’t the solution to each other, but they’ll learn. They will fuck up, but there are others, and they themselves are figuring it out. Learning how to be human. Amo used to have days where she didn’t feel human, where it felt like there was something keeping her from being as.. person-like as everyone else was. She used to have days where she would scream and shake until she passed out. Those haven’t disappeared, and those feelings may never truly go away, but... They’ve decreased. It’s easier to get through them with her dad by her side.
Jabber understands her. In a way that he wishes no one else was able to, but knows that it's more common here than it should be.
Neither of them is perfect. No one in the cleaners is.
But maybe, just maybe, they can figure out how ‘family’ is meant to work, and they can figure out how they are supposed to work.