Full-time ZanRiyo shipper

The chittering starts as a vibration in the soles of their boots before it ever reaches their ears. Zanka shifts his weight, the heavy, bandaged shaft of his staff resting across his shoulders. He isn’t looking at Riyo. He’s watching the horizon of scrap, where a red fog of dust is beginning to ripple.

"They’re movin’ fast today," he mutters, "whole lot of ’em must’ve woken up early."

Riyo isn’t nearly as bothered. She’s perched on a rusted engine block, the heels of her boots digging precariously into the metal, humming a tuneless song.

"More for us to kill," she says, her voice airy and dangerously light. She hops down, her oversized sleeves billowing. "Don’t get all stiff, Zank. You’re ruining the vibe."

"Vibe ain’t gonna keep your head on your shoulders," he snaps.

The first wave breaks over the nearest ridge of debris—a tide of jagged metal, fused wire, and discarded car parts, all twitching with a borrowed, hateful life.

Riyo takes the nearest beast apart at the knees.

Metal jaws snap at the empty air where her ankle was a second earlier. She drops low, hooks one handle of her scissors with her foot, and drives the opened blade through the thing’s neck in one clean sweep. The thing folds with a wet crunch into the slope of rubbish beneath it.

"C’mon," she calls, swinging her scissors back up onto one shoulder. "That all you’ve got?"

"Quit invitin’ trouble," Zanka huffs, knocking another one out of the air before it can land on her.

His Lovely Assistaff cracks into its ribs with a sound like wet timber splitting. The trash beast flies sideways and disappears into a mound of bent shelving. He doesn’t waste time watching it die. There are too many shapes moving in the clutter ahead, too many scraping feet and snapping mouths getting louder by the second.

Riyo is still grinning.

"This ain’t a game," Zanka says.

They’re deep in one of the old dumping grounds, where mountains of scrap lean in so tight they block half the sky. Broken rails jut from the heaps like bones. Every surface is slick with grime and powdered rust. The wind changes, carrying with it a sour blend of oil, stale water, scorched plastic, and the heavier rot from lower down, where nobody lasts long without a mask.

Another, much smaller trash beast scrambles over a refrigerator carcass, its jaws chattering.

Riyo laughs under her breath and goes for it.

But Zanka doesn’t. He drives his Lovely Assistaff into the ground instead and feels the answer run up the shaft of it into his hands. Movement. Not from one direction. From several. Front, left, behind the heap to their right. Fast.

His face hardens.

"Riyo..."

She glances back, still crouched from her swing. "What?"

"We’re done here. Fall back."

A second later, she hears it too—scraping, thudding, the ugly clatter of too many huge bodies jostling through too much junk. Not just the ones in front. The ones behind the heaps as well. Closing in.

Riyo wipes the back of her wrist across her cheek. "We can take ’em."

"Don’t be stupid." He jerks his chin towards a narrow run between two collapsed piles of junk. "Move."

She makes a face. "I’ve got this, Zank!"

"Too many! We’re boxed in." He catches another pulse through the ground, counts fast, doesn’t like the answer. "You wanna get buried under trash, go ahead. I don’t."

A beast drops from above. Zanka knocks it out of the air with one brutal upward strike. It smashes into a mound of busted drawers.

"Just a few more!" Riyo chirps, spinning on one heel to clip the legs off another.

Then she sees what he sees. The area around them is filling; a writhing mass of metal, more than either of them have ever seen in one place before.

Zanka doesn’t wait for her agreement. He grabs her by the sleeve and hauls her sideways just as a huge beast barrels through the gap where she was standing. They hit the slope of junk hard, boots skidding on crushed cans and greasy metal.

Zanka spots the gap between an overturned car and a stack of sagging furniture at the same time Riyo sees the dead end beyond it. A car has landed on its side against a couch with its stuffing coming out, leaving a dark pocket underneath where junk has piled up just wrong enough to make a space. Filthy, tight, and barely fit for one person, but better than staying out in the open with ten more trash beasts closing in.

He shoves the couch arm with his shoulder hard enough to make room. "Get in."

Riyo skids to a stop. "You’re kidding."

A beast roars somewhere close enough to rattle the car above them.

"I ain’t."

Riyo folds herself down with a hiss of disgust and wedges into the pocket, pulling The Ripper in behind her. Zanka shoves Lovely Assistaff through the gap after her, then crams himself in last, shoulders hunched, knees forced high. Their Vital Instruments land where they can—her scissors on the dirt between them, his staff wedged along the floor under both their legs. It makes the hiding place feel even tighter. Riyo is crushed into his right side, one shoulder braced beneath the tilted car, one thigh pinned against his.

Something rattles over the trash heap above them.

Both go still.

Dust shakes loose into Zanka’s hair. He shuts one eye, his jaw set. A cockroach skitters over the back of his hand and disappears into the stuffing of the couch.

Riyo leans in until her mouth is near his ear. "Tell me we’re not staying in here long."

"Depends on how much you like getting chewed on."

He keeps two fingers against Lovely Assistaff, reading what he can through the packed scrap and ground beneath them. The swarm is still circling. One heavy body lands on the car above, and the frame dips with a groan, bringing the metal edge close enough to brush the top of Riyo’s hair.

Riyo leans closer to hear him over the noise. "How many?"

Zanka gives her a flat look. “Use your ears.”

Her breath touches his cheek when she huffs. In here, every small thing feels bigger than it should. The heat off her body. The rough edge of her jacket bunching against his arm. A loose strand of red hair caught against the side of his throat. He shifts half an inch to get away from it and only manages to press his knee more firmly between both of hers.

Riyo notices. "Oh," she whispers, grinning. "Bet you’re really hating this."

Zanka flicks her a look full of disbelief, but he doesn’t answer. He stares through the gap between two tyres instead, listening to the scratches and shuffles outside. Still, he doesn’t need to answer; his shoulders are pulled tight. His jaw keeps setting and easing. Every time Riyo moves unexpectedly, he goes still for a second as though he’s bracing for impact.

Riyo tips her head toward the opening. "So," she murmurs, leaning around him as far as she can. "You drag all the cleaners into mouldy trash holes, or am I just special?"

Zanka’s ears are already flushed from the suffocating heat in here and her comment does not help.

"You always talk this much when somethin’s trying to eat you?"

"You always talk this much when you’re nervous?"

He hates that she can’t see much in here and still somehow nails him anyway. Zanka angles his face away and resettles his grip on the staff.

"I’m not nervous."

She smiles at once. "Riiiight."

His shoulders are up near his ears. He forces them down. Beside him, Riyo keeps shifting every few moments, restless as a cat shut in a crate.

The minutes drag.

The air under the car gets thicker. The old foam inside the couch is giving off a damp, sour smell. The metal frame digs into Zanka’s back. Sweat gathers at the base of his neck. Riyo’s leg bumps his again when she changes position, and neither of them has the energy to comment on it this time.

Outside, the noises start to spread out. Less concentrated now. A little farther off.

Riyo tips her head toward the opening. "Think they’re moving on."

"They might be."

She rolls her eyes and starts to lean forward.

Zanka’s voice drops. "Riyo. Stay put."

"Zank." She lifts one finger at him without turning round. "Relax. I’m just looking."

"And I’m sayin’ don’t."

She waits exactly one second before ignoring him.

She ducks under the slant of the car and leans toward the narrow opening between the couch arm and the tyre stack. One hand braces on the ground. Her weight leaves his side. Cool air sneaks in through the gap around her.

Zanka feels the vibration change under his fingertips.

Riyo leans another inch. "I can’t see any—"

He moves on pure reflex.

He catches the back of her collar and yanks her hard into the pocket just as something scrapes across the car’s far side.

It happens fast.

Too fast for either of them to correct.

Riyo comes back hard, twisted halfway round already to bite his head off for manhandling her—

—and slams straight into him.

Their mouths knock together awkwardly in the cramped dark, more force than either of them is ready for. His fist is still bunched in her collar. Her breath catches against his mouth. In a space this tight, there’s nowhere to go, nowhere to pull without making it worse.

So for one stupid second, neither of them moves.

Their faces were already too close in the cramped dark, and now there’s no distance at all. Just the stunned press of lips that should have broken a second ago and somehow still hasn’t yet.

Zanka feels every point of contact all at once. Then he jerks back so abruptly he cracks the back of his head against the underside of the car.

"Damn it."

Riyo stares at him. Then she folds in on herself with silent laughter, her shoulders shaking. She clamps a hand over her mouth.

Red floods up from Zanka’s collar and doesn’t stop until it’s reached his hairline.

"Could you not," he mutters, furious in the quietest voice possible.

Her eyes are wide and shining. "You kissed me."

His head snaps toward her. "I did not kiss you."

"You absolutely did." She giggles.

"You turned around!"

"Because you grabbed me like a psycho."

"Because you were about to stick your face out there and get yourself killed."

Riyo bites the inside of her cheek, losing the battle anyway. She leans closer, squinting at his face in the dim light. A breathy, helpless little laugh slips through her fingers. "Your face—"

"Don’t start. It’s hot in here, okay?" He looks away so sharply that he nearly drives his own cheek into the couch arm. There is nowhere good to put his eyes now. Not on the slit of light. Not on her. Not on the floor, because the floor is where her knee is still pressed against his and that somehow now feels even worse than before.

Riyo’s shoulders twitch again. When she lowers her hand from her mouth, she is grinning from ear to ear. Zanka makes a strangled sound somewhere between outrage and embarrassment. A noise that is, Riyo decides, deeply satisfying.

Meanwhile, Zanka half-wishes one of the trash beasts would kick the car hard enough to knock him unconscious. Just for a minute. Just long enough to skip this.

Instead, he says, with all the dignity he can salvage, "You’re enjoying this too much."

"Well, it is funny."

"There’s not one thing funny about gettin’ your face slammed into somebody else’s."

Riyo’s brows lift. "Wow, you remember it so clearly."

He stares at the gap ahead, jaw locked. She expects another snap from him. Maybe a muttered insult. Instead, he goes still, the tips of his ears still bright, as if holding himself in place takes more effort than he wants her to see.

Before, the cramped space was only annoying. Now her knee against his, her shoulder at his arm, even the small shifts of her breathing refuse to fade into the background. When he adjusts his grip on the staff, she notices. When she moves, he does too. The swarm is still near enough that neither of them can risk raising their voices, which means all the embarrassment has to stay pressed in the same tiny pocket of air with them.

Riyo studies him from the side. She leans back against the couch frame, this time more carefully. "You know," she whispers, "if you hadn’t grabbed me so hard—"

He doesn’t look at her. "I saved you."

"Funny. You weren’t this jumpy even when they were trying to eat us."

Zanka keeps pressing his lips together, then relaxing them again, as if he’s trying to erase the memory and keeps failing.

"Ri. Shut up." There’s warning in it, but not much force. He sounds tired. Mortified. Maybe a little pleading, though he would bite his own tongue before admitting that.

She decides to stop poking the bruise with both hands after that.

For a while, they listen to the trash yard settle around them. A cable somewhere overhead taps against metal in the wind. Loose glass tinkles under distant claws. Water drips steadily from something rusted and hollow.

The old car shell traps the heat of their bodies and gives it back to them. Riyo’s shoulder stays against his. Zanka no longer tries to edge away, maybe because he’s run out of room, maybe because there’s no point anymore.

When one beast darts past the opening, both tense at once. Riyo’s hand lands on his arm.

By the time the vibrations finally thin to almost nothing, the awkwardness has changed shape. It’s still there. Still sharp. But underneath it, there’s something stranger now, some new awareness that wasn’t packed into this hole with them when they first crawled in.

Riyo is the first to move again. "Think we’re clear now?"

Zanka listens a few seconds longer. "Mostly. I’m going first. You’ll sprint out there like an idiot."

She gives him a look. "You make one mistake—"

"You were about to make another," he catches himself before saying more, then mutters, "just… wait."

Riyo blinks. His words come out rough, softer than before. It does something odd to her chest that she decides not to examine.

Zanka ducks through the gap and unfolds too fast once he’s clear, drawing one long breath of open air like he’s been underwater. Dust streaks one side of his face. His hair’s a mess where it’s caught on rust and old stuffing. He doesn’t look at her while she climbs out after him.

It’s quieter now. A dead beast lies wedged halfway down the slope where they left it. Further off, something moves behind a pile of trash bags, then vanishes. Riyo straightens, brushes the grime off her jacket and watches Zanka in profile.

He doesn’t speak. He adjusts the strap at his chest, then the sash at his waist, then nothing at all, because he’s run out of excuses to do something with his hands.

Riyo starts to grin on instinct, but it falters before it fully forms.

They start walking side by side. The route bends between heaps of scrap so tightly that their shoulders brush once, then again. A few steps later, the ground shifts under a layer of loose metal sheets and Riyo starts to step wrong. Zanka catches the sleeve of her jacket on instinct and steadies her before she can slide.

The touch lasts no more than a second. Then he lets go at once, as if he’s realised what he’s done.

Riyo looks down at the place he touched, then at him.

Zanka keeps his eyes ahead. The tips of his ears are pink again.

"C’mon," he says.