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The fight is over, sure, but there's still that dull, tangible vibration in their bodies that can't quite quit. Lust ligers, kicked up from the scuffle, and something distant drips as they watch each other, crumpled on the ground on too heavy legs, breathing in simultaneous, breathy huffs. Like their lungs are wrapped in the world's finest thread.
Zanka's lip is split. There's a delicious gash on Jabber's cheek. And they're both vaguely splattered in a mix of each other's blood.
And, of course, neither of them talk.
There's a strange, charged quiet that exists between them when they aren't trying to kill each other. Faux stillness, both making a valiant attempt. They have not yet mapped the battlefields of each other's bodies in any way other than violence. The distance between them, reminiscent of two animals who, momentarily, have agreed not to bite.
Zanka shifts a little closer, somewhat. Then reaches out. Curiosity stitches into his bones. That's Zanka's side of the game. He likes the touch, the feel of the hit. Jabber just lives for the euphoric, experimental violence. Different, but the same. Every time Zanka looks at Jabber, who no doubt does too, he gets this strange, curious ache under his ribs. Like the simultaneous resolution: I want to ruin you. I want to understand what you're made of.
He touches Jabber's cheek with the backs of his knuckles. Careful and testing. A tender contact, if it were anyone else, but tender doesn't exist between them. Zanka approaches Jabber with the same careful contact you'd hot-wire a car with. Like he's dissecting a live wire with bare fingers.
And Jabber watches. Amused. Interested. The unblinking, mad scientist stare. He doesn't lean in, he doesn't lean away. Just watches, as if processing the data in real time. Because Jabber is weird about non-violent touch. Jabber moves too fast, feels too sharp, and thinks in jagged, broken mirror glass. And a gentle touch is a misfire. Too deliberate and aimed, the opposite of everything Jabber exists as. Violence? He understands that. Quick hits and hard contact and sudden force. It's kinetic communication. As thrilling as it is efficient. Nothing stays still long enough to become, God forbid, intimate. The only person asking anything of him is himself and the person begging him to please, please, end it already.
Jabber is weird when someone gets close enough to touch and not hurt. Like being stared at from too up close. Spoken to in a language that requires touch and eye contact and sincerity: shit he ain't ever learned.
So, Zanka reaching out to touch Jabber's face, not to win, or to take advantage, just to feel in his own weirdo, freak way. Jabber goes kind of still. Calculating. Curious. An eerie, lab-rat concentration. His breath hitching, once, twice, barely there. A buffer in the brain.
Zanka loves sensation: pain, closeness, heat. It's its own kind of fascination. His love for touch is rooted in the same place his thrill for violence lives. Jabber’s aversion? Well, that comes from his inability to separate the two.
Now:
Zanka's fingers wander. Travelling up, slow and meandering and curious. They brush Jabbers' cheekbones, toe the cut that sits there. Like he's mapping Jabber's soul in braille.
A little too handsy, now-
Jabber interrupts. Deadpan. Simultaneously nonchalant yet clear as a fucking stop sign.
“Don't touch my hair.”
Not harsh, or even particularly emotional. Just a preference delivered with the same clinical bluntness as a six-months-to-live prognosis.
Zanka pauses. Hands a breath away from the base of Jabber's locs. Almost quietly earnest in his acceptance and admission. Because their entire, ugly relationship is based off of knowing which lines to cross.
“Wasn't gonna,” Zanka says softly.
Then his hands, still trailing, touch lower. Down Jabber's jaw. Along the hinge. Over the tendon in his throat, the hammering pulse.
Jabber's breath catches. Like his body is recognising the novelty of the whole ordeal. It's so weird. Because Zanka moving his hand down Jabber's neck with that slow gentless is in contrast with everything they usually are. It's not even about softness, it's about proximity. And access.
Jabber doesn't stop Zanka.
He doesn't help him along, either.
He just endures the touch like he endures a new toxin on his skin: neutral, assessing, curious.
Zanka's hands are still lingering when he asks, the way he does everything, steady and blunt and pretending he doesn't care about the answer while his hand's waver.
“Can I kiss you?”
Raw as degloved flesh and third degree burns.
Jabber doesn't blink. “Nah.”
That same factual bluntness. Like commenting on the weather.
Zanka nods, accepting it like he accepts the buckets of blood they've shared by accident. He tries again:
“Can I kiss your neck?”
Huh?
Jabber's eyebrows raise a fraction. Like that was an unexpected wrench in their bi-weekly weirdness operation.
“My neck?”
Jabber says it slightly off kilter and baffled. Like Zanka asked him if he could sniff a chemical burn. Jabber's not opposed, per se, but he doesn't get it either.
Zanka just shrugs. He's a strange guy, this one.
Jabber thinks about it. Really thinks. Gaze darting about while he does the maths. The physics of the whole equation. The hazards and the mess and the touch.
Cons: Zanka's teeth near his throat.
Pros: Zanka's teeth near his throat.
Then, Jabber snorts, “y'so weird, man. You a weird fuckin' dude.”
A second.
“Interestin' though…”
He reaches up and pushes his locs back over one shoulder. The tilts his head just enough to expose the line of his neck. Not submissive or even inviting. Just allowance and curiosity in equal measure. The strange, clinical way they interact with each other, like they're both aliens in skin suits.
Zanka moves.
Jabber doesn't close his eyes. Doesn't soften. Just watches, eyes wide open, with a bright, avid curiosity. Like observing a scientific experiment.
Zanka's lips touch his skin. Barely. A second. A brush.
Jabber inhales sharply, isn't…displeased.
It isn’t affection.
Isn’t romance.
Isn’t tenderness.
It's experimental heat. One creature learning the texture of another.
Jabber tilts his head a fraction more, and Zanka kisses again.
Allowance. Permission.