tamsy caines the character you are

They both just got cleared for missions today and, the way he’s been lookin’ at the kid during training, he’s gonna land one or both of ’em back in Eishia’s care. But it’s been bugging him—the way Zanka looks back. ’Cause Jabber’s half-drooling at him.

Zanka’s itching for a fight, maybe. Training Rudo means Zanka has a lot less time for extra sparring. He could just be missing the extra practice and attention, but Enjin watches them have half a conversation with their eyebrows, and then Zanka, spitefully, pointedly, picks someone else as his partner for the warm-up. Jabber stares after him with this funny look on his face. Half smiling, like he’s heard his own private joke. His expression flattens when Gris pairs up with him. But… Jabber’s always laughing at something. Should he really be picking this one instance apart?

Enjin supposes he’s been here a month already, and he’s been hounding Zanka’s door the whole time. It’s not that weird that they’re starting to communicate a bit better. It’s happening a little faster than he’d expected, but doesn’t that mean Jabber’s integrating into the team well? It is Enjin’s job to care about that. If they know how to talk to each other, maybe they can learn to coexist without breaking ribs or stabbing the other with fucking rattlesnake venom—like anti-venom is easy to come by on the Ground, but whatever.

They’re grown; he should leave them to it.

And then Enjin remembers the first time he met Jabber. The dude was whining that he could only get so hard off the idea of getting his ass beat by the Cleaners. And he thinks of Kyouka. Yeah, that’s an ass-whooping he’d be obliged to accept and would never recover from.

Nope. For a little while longer, he’ll stick his nose in.

Anyway, he just asks the kid, hoping he’s banked up enough goodwill and big-bro points that Zanka just tells it to him straight.

“Going on? Nothing’s going on with me and him. He’s infuriating,” Zanka mutters instead.

“How so?”

“Uh? Y’know already! You’ve been around him.”

Yeah, Enjin has his own qualms with the little freak, but he was asking Zanka.

“Could… you be more specific?”

“Well…” And Zanka’s pupils get all shifty, and he stammers out something worse than anything Enjin ever pulled out his ass at Zanka’s age.

“Alright, kid,” Enjin cuts in, relieving him, and sends him on his merry way. Worth a shot.

Anyway, a few days later he catches the start of one of their fights while loitering on rooftops with a handy pair of binoculars, for no particular reason. They just healed up. It’s bad for them to be constantly nursing something broken, despite how much of a freak Jabber is where pain is involved. Nah. He’s intervening this time.

That is, until he sees Zanka grab the front of Jabber’s shirt and pull him in to whisper something. And from here, Enjin can see Jabber’s grin widen, splitting his face in two. Jabber turns and plays lookout while Zanka?? picks the lock for the storeroom behind them?? A second of fiddling later, and Zanka grabs Jabber by the purple cloth behind him, pulls him into the storeroom, and shuts the door behind them.

Oh. Well, shit. That complicates things.

Firsts stick in a way that you don’t really get to choose. Enjin thinks back on himself at Zanka’s age. No fucking shot he could’ve entertained anything with someone like Jabber without doing some permanent damage to his brain. Nor could he at eighteen, nineteen—hell, twenty. But Zanka isn’t him. Is he really allowed to stop him from choosing at all?

He stares at the shut door. And the cracked window someone inside closes the blinds on. He’s pretty sure what’s going on in there, but on the off chance that he’s wrong—and Zanka does need some help… Ughhhh. He’s about to see or hear something he doesn’t wanna know about, isn’t he?

He doesn’t sneak to the storeroom; he just walks right up. If they’re gonna notice him and stop, he’ll give them every opportunity. He doesn’t even have to get that close to the open window. He sees the back of Jabber’s head pressed back into the glass, a flash of pale fingers wrapped around his throat.

Jabber’s voice is breathless, strained. He sounds desperate—wrecked, as if they’d been in there hours already. Oh, to be young again.

“Careful, Mr. Bad Attitude. I’m delicate, y’know.”

Zanka’s voice is sharper. More in control—but only just.

“Shuddap, like ya haven’t been beggin’ me for it. You—”

Yep. That’s enough confirmation for Enjin, putting some blessed sound-dampening distance between them.