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Footsteps crunch against soil. What sounds like a metal sole crushes a bottle underneath its weight. The crackle of the plastic folding in on itself echoes across the ground and into his ears and into his head and -
Jabber groans. Tries to roll over, and fails. The vibration of his voice in his chest is making him nauseous. Fuck, whatever he'd injected himself with had been strong.
"Yo. Fuck are ya doing here?"
Loud, too loud. When he tries to move his mouth to speak, his teeth click together, a sharp jolt of awareness shooting through his jaw. "Zanka," he says, or maybe slurs. It's hard for him to open his mouth right now, or his eyes, but it's not like going to be anyone else. He forces his eyelids open, vision blurry, but he thinks he can make out something like blue in his peripheral. Then he stops trying to make it out, because his eyes feel like they're disintegrating in his sockets and then melting back into spinal fluid.
The metal sole nudges against his side, cold, shifting his torso slightly enough to send agony lancing through his entire body. He thinks his ribs are broken, probably, which is why. That, and the fact that all of his nerves are shot right now, wires crossed so badly that the next reminder of him having a physical body might kill him. He groans again, or maybe moans, and feels himself sink deeper into that heady pain.
"Yer a damn mess," Zanka says, something almost fond coloring his voice. There's a faint rustling sound, and then Jabber catches sight of movement, the Cleaner dropping down into a crouch right next to him. "The fuck d'ya take?"
Take? How is Jabber supposed to take anything? His hands hurt. Or - no. He never lets anything happen to his hands, so that can't be quite right, though the idea of trying to drag himself back together enough to figure it out sounds so exhausting that it's not even worth the pain. Uhh, he thinks. Everything hurts. His arms, then.
Wait. Did Jabber take something? Is that what Zanka's asking? He likely did. He can't really move, but it's not the exhaustion that comes after a good fight, it's paralysis. Or at least partially. He thinks he did have a good fight, probably, but not good enough. Not like when the two of them fight, at least. It's rare he comes away from one of their battles unsatisfied enough to poison himself. Poison. Huh. What'd he poison himself with? When did he do that?
Something almost like remembrance brushes against his mind, faint, and then slips back out, dripping away from his consciousness the same way there's blood dripping down his face right now. It probably doesn't matter anyway.
He twitches his head to the side a little bit, hears Zanka exhaling sharply with amusement or surprise, and then cool hands grip his jaw and move his face for him. A noise drags itself out of his throat. It hurts. Zanka's never gentle with it, only goes slow when slowing down makes things worse; the rings on his middle fingers holding his gloves up dig into his skin and he thinks deliriously if that's what it feels like when he touches him with Mankira.
"Seriously, man," he hears, though it's clear from Zanka's voice that he's given up on getting any kind of response. "Ya look real pathetic like this."
Jabber laughs. He can taste blood in the back of his throat, bubbling up from the movement. Whatever had happened must've been real good to leave him like this, even if his head's spinning too much for him to really remember. It's agonizing. Zanka's not letting up at all and it's making everything worse - making everything hurt - making everything better. It had taken so much time for him to break down all that fucking hesitation but if this is the result then it was absolutely worth waiting for.
Though he can't remember why Zanka's here, either. Of course, he's not going to complain, but he didn't think they were supposed to fight today. The Cleaner always gets pressed about it, shouting something-or-other about schedules and time and discretion that he always ignores. Makes the other hit harder.
He kind of wants Zanka to hit him now, actually. It's not as good if it's not a fight, but another twitch reminds him that one of Zanka's hands is still on his face, holding it loosely except for where his nails dig into him. Can he get him to dig deeper? To really, truly, make Jabber bleed?
"Should... fight," he coughs out, and feels the blood splatter across lips from the movement, the smell of iron breaking through the haze in his head for a second.
There's a pause, and then Zanka laughs, sharp, hand tensing up instinctively and lancing WHITE-HOT through his jaw again. Why is his jaw hurting so much? Oh, right, it's dislocated.
"We ain't doing that," Zanka tells him, "ya can't fight like this. Like, literally." He's still kind-of giggling. Jabber likes hearing it. He thinks of them, in the trash beast, months ago, and Zanka laughing, laughing, laughing even once the hallucinogens wore off and it should've been just pain. Most people would've died.
Zanka would have, if it hadn't been for the red-haired girl with a gun, but it wouldn't have been from Mankira's poison. He had dragged Zanka away and thought, what a damn waste. Most people didn't laugh.
His ribs had been broken back then, too. He still thinks about it, some days. The Cleaner hadn't hesitated at all before punching the break, fracturing his ribs so badly that Zodyl had to dump him with a Giver doctor in order to keep the bone fragments from slicing open his lungs.
Jabber breathes in sharply and feels it expand against the pain of his ribs and thinks, definitely broken. The pain trembles around his sides and doesn't cease. He can't stop from grinning, the stretch of his mouth only worsening the ache in his jaw, which only makes him smile harder, and so on, so forth - "Fuck," he says, exhaling, and it comes out more like a primal noise than a word.
Zanka sighs. "Y'ain't even that beat up," he says, annoyed, and Jabber grins. The more annoyed he is, the more chances that he'll take it out on the closest person he sees, who just happens to be - ding ding ding! - Jabber himself. "Ugh. 'S just yer fucking poison." There's another pause, Zanka's fingers curling into his jaw again, before he repeats, "The fuck did ya take?"
Jabber coughs again. "No clue," he gasps, and blinks open his eyes - when had he closed them? - to meet Zanka's, dark pools of blue so full they look black. He loves when Zanka looks at him like that. Pretending like Jabber's suffering isn't what he came here to see at all.
"Dunno how yer still alive," Zanka mutters. "I should really just kill ya right now. Ya can't stop me like this."
Oh, yes, yes, please. Jabber wants to see that. Wants to feel Zanka taking his life, impaling him on his vital instrument or snapping his neck with those cold fingers or digging a hand through his chest to pull out his heart. It'll hurt. Long, and slow, and painful. No matter what he decides to do, Jabber knows that he'll make it hurt, he'll make it last, looking at him with those dark eyes all the while like his death is the greatest thing he's ever seen.
Because it will be. They both know this.
He can't say any of this, the back of his mouth filled with too much blood and drool and his muscles too exhausted to speak so long, but he tries to lean into Zanka's hand as best as he can, blinking up at the Cleaner and thinking, please, please, and from the way Zanka's breath catches in his throat he knows that everything he wanted to say was understood.
"Ya would like that, wouldn't ya," Zanka huffs, though his voice is still shaky. Jabber would make fun of him for it if he could muster up more than a couple of words, and he's about to try before the other pushes his hand further into his jaw further, rolling his eyes at the agonized groan this gets him. "Freak."
Jabber wills his mouth to work at least a little more and lets the blood drip down his chin so he can smile better. "Takes one to know one."
"Fuck off," Zanka tells him, and Jabber's eyes slip closed just as he hears rustling as the other apparently readjusts his position. The hand doesn't leave his face, though, still leaving pressure on the worst part of the dislocated jaw, which is the only reason he doesn't force himself back alert to try to stab him. "Yer so annoying," he continues, and then, all of a sudden, there's another cold hand on the other side of his jaw.
He blinks. The other hand is also pressing into him, into that exact spot where his jaw should be but isn't, and it hurts SO MUCH. There's blood in his mouth and on his skin and bleeding all over his body, and he's also acutely aware of how much blood is rushing downwards right now, which is both heaven and hell and also something Zanka's going to get pissed about when he notices. His mouth splits into an even wider grin entirely involuntarily.
He thinks about pointing it out. The hands on his jaw flex. It's all the warning he gets before Zanka's fingers dig into his skin and snap his jaw back into place.
Jabber screams.
Or tries to, at least, but there are still fingers in his mouth pressing down onto his tongue and it comes out as some choked-up noise instead, gasping for breath, short, choppy movements only aggravating his ribs further. His hips buck up instinctively. "Fuck," he says. Somewhere in the back of his head, he realizes that it really is easier to talk with his jaw set, but the thought quickly vanishes in face of the pain. "Fuck, fuck, it hurts," and then the rest of his words stop making sense and start turning into pained moans instead. He can't bring himself to care.
Zanka's fingers are still on his face, in his mouth, and they're trembling. When he opens his eyes again, blinking away the sweat that had dripped down his forehead, the Cleaner's face is utterly impassive if not for a faint tinge of disgust coloring his eyes.
His hand are trembling, though. As much as he's trying to pretend he isn't into this, it's not working. Not with Jabber, at least, who's long known every single one of his tells.
And anyway, if he really hated this as much as he likes to say he does, he could look away. There's nothing stopping him. Jabber's too out of it to keep him from leaving, and even trying to call Mankira isn't a guarantee - the guy's fast, and like this, Jabber knows he'll be too slow. But he hasn't. Zanka came here, and even when his eyes kept slipping shut from the pain, the Cleaner hasn't looked away from him once.
"Fuck," Jabber says again, and then, "you always know how to make it good, Zan-zan." The fingers clench, sending a fresh wave of pain through his still-very-sensitive jaw, and Jabber moans again.
"Liked ya better when ya couldn't talk," Zanka says.
"Try to shut me up, then," he replies, grinning the way that always pisses Zanka off. It's in his voice, too. Bet you can't. Bet you're too much of a fucking coward. And he isn't, not really, because Zanka's a lot of things but Jabber would never dare call him a coward, he's just trying to get a rise out of him again. If there's one thing about him, it's that he's never let his fear stop him. Hell, in that trash beast, Jabber had started spinning and whipping himself around with Mankira's true form just to see how the Cleaner would react and he'd come directly at him with Lovely Assistaff.
Nobody does that. Who the fuck does that? Who looks at a whirlwind of poisoned blades and thinks, sure, let me get closer?
Jabber wouldn't have let him escape if he'd tried to run, of course. But there's still something about the fact that he hadn't tried at all. They really are the same - neither of them have ever been able to back away from a fight, never been able to back away from each other.
Zanka's hands clench, still on his face, probably leaving an array of bruises painting his skin, and then there's a mouth smashing into his and Jabber feels his lip split open under the force of it. His mouth opens wider, greedy, trying to suck in as much of Zanka as he can the same way the Cleaner's practically eating him too. Zanka's teeth dig into the wound, coaxing out even more blood, and Jabber laughs. Feels his ribs tremble with it. It's warm and wet and so, so violent, and he probably won't be able to talk at all tomorrow with all the torture his jaw is going through right now.
He feels delirious. He wouldn't have it any other way.