Chapter Text
Looking back on it, Zanka has mixed feelings about it.
Being part of the Cleaners was equally, if not more dangerous than being part of the Hell Guard and it was a strenuous, 24/7 gig. There was an unsaid understanding when you signed up that free time was an oxymoron for any respectable giver - unless given the circumstance that you were knocked on your ass so hard that you were bed bound and even then, it wouldn’t be long before Eishia was at your bedside. Even more rare than the condition of grievous bodily harm was taking granted time off, which had to be granted by Arkha - who was a whole another sidequest to even get into contact with, and with the dire need of cleaners and the sparse availability of them, time off wasn’t granted without good reason.
The only other reason was because of ruts or heats.
At some point in between eighteen and twenty three, human bodies on the Ground developed an individualized scent that showcased their dynamic (alpha, beta or omega) and with that designation, a set of physical characteristics. Although there were outliers, alphas tended to have larger canines, developed muscle easier, and tended to be on the stockier side. Omegas ran on the tinier side, more feminine in shape and softened by their childrearing capabilities. Betas were the most like spherites, having no heats or ruts and a generally dull sense of smell, and by far were the most common of all the dynamics.
That being said, there were only a few alphas and omegas in the cleaners. Zanka, who still lacked a scent himself and therefore couldn’t sniff out people’s dynamics himself, only learned who was what from Enjin. During an impromptu meal at 3 AM after coming back from a harrowingly boring mission, the topic had only come up by chance and Enjin mapped it out for him in between long slurps of a bowl of noodles.
Follo, a supporter that Zanka was both familiar with and rapidly becoming good friends with, was an alpha - somewhat surprisingly, given his frame was on the lithe side. But giving it second thought it seemed fitting for the nineteen year old, who mostly had a cool demeanor and a reassuring, comforting way of interacting with both clients and people. Besides Follo, Enjin had briefly mentioned Mildretta from the Southern Branch, an alpha woman who Zanka had never met before.
As for the omegas, there was Tamsy and Semiu, neither being particularly shocking to Zanka. Omegas were known to have a shocking, ethereal kind of beauty to them that sucked in and demanded all of the attention in the room when they spoke or so much as shifted. Both Tamsy and Semiu encapsulated that lethal beauty. Semiu didn’t need to sweet talk a single soul into doing a request for her when she could pin someone down with the sheer severity of her long-lashed eyes alone and Tamsy carried another kind of elegance entirely, with the way his attention felt like silk on the skin and his smile was honeyed ease.
At the end of his explanation, Enjin slipped in the fact that he too was an alpha, like it was a little afterthought that was barely worth the breath in which it was spoken. While Enjin busied himself with slurping up the last dredges of his noodle broth, Zanka allowed himself a small moment of emotional reprieve, digging his teeth into his bottom lip and looking up to the ceiling in a fit of barely concealed delight. Of course, Enjin - Enjin, who was tall, devastatingly suave and charismatic, with a toned, sculpted body and large, capable hands that Zanka had wondered - no, fantasized - about squeezing around his waist - was an alpha. Zanka had suspected and daydreamed but never scraped up the courage to actually ask, unwilling to cast aside his carefully crafted persona of cool, nonchalance.
Besides those few individuals, there was a slew of betas among the supporters and givers - who Zanka had fully believed he would also fit into, when his time came. Truthfully, with the hefty weight of responsibility and day-to-day dangers that came with being part of the Cleaners, Zanka had rarely considered his own designation. Even when his eighteenth birthday had passed, the only real thought that Zanka had given it was a momentary glance in the mirror after a shower in headquarters before he was on his way back to work.
What he saw reflecting back at him gave him no strong indication towards one way or the other; rather, it filled him with a vague sense of inadequacy, as it always did. There was never enough muscle to his shape, always a little too much baby fat carried in his face, a lack of that overwhelming beauty found in omegas, and not enough of that sturdiness found in the firm frames of alphas. Zanka had always felt painfully average and it always stung to see it reflected in his own image, despite the lengths he’d go to for his own grooming and upkeep.
So, when Jabber leans into the crook of his neck after he’s flopped to the ground in a painful heap of locked up, seizing muscles, the only reaction he has is fear that the deranged man plans to quite literally bite his throat out. When he instead gently noses and sniffs at his scent gland, Zanka’s brain locks up in real time, freezing and cutting off his thoughts like the scratch of a record.
“Hang on now… I can almost…” Jabber mumbles, sounding eerily delighted as he brushes in so close that Zanka might have been able to feel the brush of his lips if not for the pain twisting and clamping down repeatedly on his body. But he does feel the long, insistent press of his tongue against his scent gland and he mentally reels at the sensation, never having felt such an all consuming dread in his entire life.
It feels like something clicks into place in his brain at the sensation, like either a loose screw has been tightened just right or an extra-little something has slotted right into place, so firmly and seamlessly it’d be impossible to eject it back out. This odd-placed feeling, coupled with the sporadic and incessant on and off firing of pain in every single one of his nerve endings and the thick hot pad of Jabber’s tongue on his neck, slams into this full bodied, frenzied panic - it’s overstimulating to the extent that he loses vision despite being unable to blink.
All he can feel is Jabber’s tongue, like it’s the only thing keeping him attached to this reality - while at the same time, he feels everything else. It’s like his brain can’t focus on a single thing, flip-flopping to the pain, to some distant laughter, to the way his body is pressed against the ground, and circling back to the shocking clarity of the smell in the air. It’s as if someone pressed a candle right under his nose, or spritzed perfume right in his face, with the way that the scent of whiskey is stabbing into sinuses so sharply that he’s seeing snaps of white in his vision. Only vaguely can he feel his body beginning to heat up, the sensation lost on him in between the myriad of pain and stimulation he’s being swamped in.
At some point, in this infinite stretch of full-bodied despair and anguish, the curtain swishes close and darkness falls over him in its entirety. He blacks out, a welcomed reprieve.
The dark is all consuming at first, taking all light, sound, physical sensation, and thought with it. It’s like someone has dropped a candle snuffer over him, completely cutting him off from the living world in every sense. Then, slowly, sensation starts to come back, leaking into his world like cracks in an air tight jar that rattles alive his consciousness.
The pain from before had been so excruciating that it takes a lot for him to hold onto that sliver of consciousness, the feeling of holding on - of still having the courage and drive to fight and make sure his team mates are alive and well - feels like holding onto a rope that’s being pulled rapidly from him with bloodstained, raw hands. Poison echoes through his body in tremors of pain, but now there’s this inescapable heat that’s crashing against him like huge rolling waves of fire to accompany it.
Someone moves his body upright, saying something to him, and Zanka can barely register it. He’s too focused on the sluggish movement of water in his body, this rush of vertigo when he moves, the poison and his own blood sliding and churning together inside of him like oil sliding against water.
“-ka? Zan-”
“Still brea-”
“-ot you, gon-”
Riyo, he registers blearily, Riyo. There is no time or energy to be wasted on anything but keeping his fingers digging into his consciousness, heaving with all of his energy and might to climb himself out of this black pit, but with Riyo’s presence comes reassurance. Like knowing there’s some kind of soft padding underneath his feet to catch him, despite the hundreds of feet drop.
Then there’s more movement, more lava lamp-esque vertigo. He can feel a sharp pressure in his abdomen and his body bobs with movement, an arm keeping him balanced. There’s the smell of skin, sweat and the distinct scent of Riyo’s rose-scented hair conditioner. He wouldn’t be familiar with it if she didn’t waft it under his nose for him after a supply-run, sitting in the backseat of the Cleaner’s car.
It was autumn back then and only a few months ago. Zanka can remember feeling warmed by the sunlight coming in through the car windows and the Too Lily song playing on the radio, Enjin tapping his fingers along to it on the steering wheel in the driver’s seat. Next to him in the passenger’s seat Gris was bobbing his head along and snacking on handfuls of sunflower seeds.
Zanka tries to stay there in that memory as his body clenches and unfurls on and off again with the toxin in his veins. He thinks of Riyo’s soft smile as she leaned over to extend the conditioner bottle to him as he squeezes, trying to hold onto consciousness stubbornly.
The world shifts again after an unknowable amount of time and somehow the sensation left by the poison is receding, ebbing away. There’s cool hands brushing against his forehead, then cold swipes of alcohol on still buzzing wounds. Fingers dig against his pulse, prod here and there, until there’s tightening pressure around a sore wrist and an icy wet rag applied to his forehead that brings literal tears of relief to his eyes.
For the first time in what feels like ages - maybe hours - his vocal cords spring to life in a dry, rasping groan. It’s like rubbing the soft tissue of his throat against a rough brick wall.
“Aah - A -” he sputters and coughs up, with a choked gasp.
“It’s okay, headquarters is half an hour away and you’re stable - you’re gonna make it.” A steady, reassuring voice. Two fingers against his pulse again. Gris, the name flitters into his brain with recognition.
With the squealing of tires and a sudden lurch in motion, Zanka’s body is lurching against worn pleather seats and Gris’s steadying hands. Must be in the Cleaner’s car.
“Aaah - !”
“Sorry, sorry! Hard turn!”
“A little late for that, Riyo!” Gris yells back, his grip becoming more lax.
What happens next is genuinely confusing to Zanka - because there are a thousand things he wants to say and a thousand more things that he wants to ask. Given the choice, he might’ve asked Riyo to step on the pedal, or for Gris to rewet the rag that’s going lukewarm against his inflamed scent gland. Instead, what comes out is a scratchy, desperate, involuntary noise more so than a word.
“A - Alpha!” Zanka keens, in a warped, animalistic mimicry of his own voice.
Silence overtakes the car, only the sound of the rumbling engine and the tires grinding against the dirt roads filling the air.
It occurs to him then, as the poison ebbs from his veins and his body begins to go lax, sluggishly melting into the car seat, what’s really happening. There’s a need that’s beginning to slowly churn in him, each rotation scraping at his insides with a growing and ever thickening heat. He feels untethered and insecure to the extent that he’s dizzy, the sense of vertigo that he had earlier only growing worse despite the waning of the poison and the new security that his allies should bring.
But if anything, their presence only brings a deep, grating sense of discomfort. But Gris - who smells so offending to him, like a cheap pine scented air freshener - is the far worse one between the two and his agitation towards him is mounting. He doesn’t feel particularly threatened, but everything about Gris touching his scent gland (even through the touch of a wet rag), has him tilting his body away from him and pressing his sweaty cheek into the cushion of the seat.
“Alpha…” Zanka whimpers, helplessly, without his own permission. It’s less of an understanding of what his body needs as it is a deep-seated, full bodied reflex. Like when you watch a horror movie and you jerk involuntarily at the scary parts, or how when you’re in pain you instinctively distance yourself from whatever’s causing it.
The need for an alpha, his alpha, is becoming all encompassing, closing in on him in a way that’s both terrifying and suffocating. Because Zanka knows, with what little cognitive function that he still has hold of, that he would rather blow out his own kneecaps with a gun than submit to Jabber in any fashion whatsoever.
But on the other hand, he wants Jabber so viscerally that the thought of him alone sends a tremor through him that becomes liquid warmth in his lower abdomen, trickling all the way down until it’s slipping from between his cheeks. As he regains more of his bodily function the more he cranes into himself and away from Gris, trying to inhale more of that delicious, potent scent smeared all over him.
Jabber smells like the cork of an aged bottle of rum, all warmth and the tang of promised comforts, laced with the smell of the kind of rich, expensive cigars that Zanka’s sister would smoke at night. The more he searches for it on his own clothes, his own skin, the more he’s rewarded for his efforts, his nose going pink from rubbing against his shoulders, the hem of his shirt, the tops of his knees - Jabber is everywhere.
Except for where he really wants him.
There’s a frustrating lack of Jabber on his scent glands, he realizes, which gives him another mind-numbing rush of instability and wrongness. He should smell like this alpha - his alpha (no, no, please no, part of him whispers), because it feels good, right, secure. Without that heady, protective cloak of his scent covering his glands he feels vulnerable and scrubbed raw to the point of bleeding, even the air itself beginning to become an irritant to his throbbing glands.
It stings viciously to rub his scent glands at his wrist against where Jabber’s scent is strongest, just underneath his collarbone, but his instincts tell him this is a necessary feat. The action only lasts for a moment though, before Gris is cursing and pulling his wrists up together with a single hand, squeezing and wiping at them with the wet rag he’d been pressing at his neck glands earlier before.
“Wha-?” Zanka squeaks, just as it clicks in his brain what he’s doing.
Then, for the first time in his life, Zanka spitefully hisses, weakly trying to pry away his limbs.
It makes both Riyo and Gris jump a little, but the older man is clearly in no mood to put up with his fussing.
“Stop it,” The beta snaps firmly, shaking his wrists with the emphasis he puts on the words. In an instant, Zanka’s frustration is extinguished and replaced by hot thick tears running down his cheeks and a sharp, low whine in the back of his throat.
As his physical state worsens, so does his cognitive function. Logical rationale is being dashed to the side by the deep urgency and potency of his own biological urges. All he knows is there’s a beta who’s trying to keep him from his alpha (no, a part of his brain flickers like a dying light), who’s rubbing off that comforting, intoxicating scent that was keeping him anchored to his own body. That, and the fact that his alpha isn’t there and he’s supposed to be. He’s supposed to be taking care of him.
There’s no alpha, he’s being manhandled by this awful, mean beta, and he’s burning up in the back of this shitty, rattling vehicle that’s sloshing him around in the back seat. With every bump in the road and every time the car tilts his center of gravity, Zanka’s pain only worsens as does the intolerable heat between his legs. His hips twist and weakly canter up like he can pull himself out of the sensation, but there’s no avail and no refuge - just this beta holding on to him, speaking incomprehensible babble as he twitches and rolls around his head deliriously.
By the time the car pulls taunt and then lurches back into a stop, the car door yanking open near immediately, Zanka is full on sobbing. Only between hiccups does he attempt choked inhales of breath, clogged by mucus, and his eyes are swollen and puffy with his own thick tears. The heat building inside of him feels nearly excruciating at his point and his scent glands aren’t throbbing anymore, rather, pounding with heat and pain. Beneath him he can feel an embarrassing and horrifying amount of slick pooling and even worse is his dick has been so diamond hard for so long that the leaking tip must be nearing violet in color.
“Amo is here - Amo and Semiu are here, Zanka! Come, come!” Someone lets out a sharp gasp, before sloppily trying to cover it up with an over the top falsetto sweet tone of voice.
“Gris, excellent work - now step back. He needs to spend time with other omegas.” Another more level-headed person gives out clear and concise orders. Zanka is beyond names right now, more focused on the little hands pawing at his legs and pulling him upright, out of the car, and the other sturdy support that’s shouldering most of his weight as he pulls onto his feet with boneless legs.
But more poignant than physical sensation, if only for a moment, are the scents that come along with these two voices. One, the smaller person to his left, smells sharply of rich, sweet berries and some kind of distinctly sweet, spun sugar. It’s so cloying and heavy on his senses, but unlike the beta in the vehicle, this time it isn’t as suffocating and assaulting to his nose as it is comforting, like a weighted blanket.
The other scent is like coffee loaded with cream and sugar, along with the soothing, nostalgic smell that only old books with yellowed pages seem to carry. The combined intensity of these scents should have been nauseating, but Zanka only finds relief and shelter in them. His tears are hushed and die back down to sad, pitiful whimpers, while the two omegas croon comfortingly to him in between soft hushes and platitudes.
At some point, while they’re walking (pulling Zanka along), he passes out. Somehow the heat has eased in the presence of these two omegas and the moment it ebbs, a momentary lapse in the surging waves of pain, darkness swallows him.