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The room still spins.
That's how it feels when the storm stops. Tight, like the air hasn't caught up. Not fighting and not intimacy, a secret third thing. Those quiet times when the walls sweat and the sheets are tangled and bloodstained and curling about the floor in tight little spirals.
Zanka's chest rises and falls and rises and falls. Uneven waves. The type of bliss that only comes from bruises and the complicated cocktail of everything that exists between them. And, because they exist purely as mirrors of each other, Jabber isn't any better. Quiet but jagged, as if every inhale has to carve its way.
For a long moment, they just exist. Alive in the dark.
No touch.
No voice.
Just two guys existing in the same overclocked aftermath.
Jabber, as always, moves first.
He sits up slow, then quicker when his skin complains and his muscles twitch and tweak. Swings one leg off the bed, then the other, elbows on his knees and head bowed, the length of his hair falling over his face.
Jabber doesn't look at Zanka.
And Zanka looks at Jabber like he's a puzzle he's trying to solve.
A beat.
Then, Zanka's shifting, bare skin dragging over the sheets with this quiet scratching rasp that goes right through Jabber. Because Zanka's really good at that. Real good at smothering his hands all over Jabber's buttons, intentionally or not. Zanka pokes Jabber during fights the same way someone fiddles with the radio, twisting and pressing and finding that exact frequency where Jabber sings. He gets near but dodges, moves about in fleeting hums. Then gets in close, breath hot and grin sharp, spitting shit that's practically designed to toe the rhythm between aggravation and raw heat. A sweet spot. Like choreography; Zanka's been trained his whole life.
But the unintentional? That's the part where he really gets under Jabber's skin, not so much because of the action, but the fact Zanka doesn't know.
Jabber's sensory issues don't scream, they prickle and flair. Jabber exists as noise and violence, but these quiet aches are insects under the skin. Maybe they hurt more because they're notably not loud. Nah, they slice through the nerves in precise silence. And Zanka trips every landmine because, despite how much he masquerades as someone with their shit together, he isn't the type.
The rustle of Zanka's too many layers.
The pop his jaw makes when he stretches it after a mean right hook.
The brush of his earrings against Jabber's face when he gets too close.
The lingering touch of Zanka's hands on Jabbers…everywhere.
Maybe there's an irony in the way Jabber doesn't snap, like he would have for anyone else by now, because the same part of him that finds Zanka grating finds him soothing, all the same.
Zanka curls closer.
Closer than Jabber likes or-
Maybe closer than Jabber understands.
Zanka drapes himself across Jabber's bare back, rough blanket around his own shoulders, cheek squished between his shoulder blades. Warm, heavy and real. Closer than either of them deserve to experience in the flesh.
And Jabber goes very still.
He's not, uh, angry. Not even warning. It's just that kinda startled animal freeze Jabber can't control. The one he gets when someone gets close and isn't trying to hurt him.
Zanka just exhales against his spine. This sad, soft, shaky thing that's the opposite of everything Zanka gives on the outside. Zanka sighs like the world has been peeled down to the nerve endings.
“Ya warm,” Zanka murmurs, like he's surprised at the fact. Apologetic, but also not at all. The only thing Zanka's ever apologized for is his own existence.
Jabber snorts, thin and brittle, “run hot. Get off.”
He doesn't…move though.
Zanka shifts, and his arms move in this barely-there movement. Not clinging or needy, no, never. Just anchoring. And it's not a dramatic contact, cheek to back with lax arms and breath ghosting Jabber's spine, but to Jabber? It's an unfamiliar language. Jabber speaks violence and chemicals and glee. But this?
Zanka whispers, “just a second.”
And Jabber, in all his bewilderment and strange tolerance and curious questioning, lets him have it.
One, two-
Maybe three, no, four-
Then he exhales through his nose. Shoulder's tense. Times up. Limit reached.
Jabber shrugs Zanka off. Not rough, he's sparing less of that for Zanka nowadays, but a shrug all the same.
“Don't start that, now, man.”
Zanka slides away like water. Landing safely back on his side of the bed, blanket slumping limply around his shoulders. Then, he pushes up on one elbow to study Jabber.
“Yer don't gotta get so tense,” Zanka says, almost sulking but also absurdly gentle coming from the guy that kicked Jabber's head into the pavement not three hours ago.
“Hah, tense? Jabber don't get tense.”
Third person, then. Like an armor.
Jabber can handle that version of himself.
Zanka hums, low and easy and disbelieving.
“It's jus' touch.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Jabber laughs. “That's the whole problem, man.”
Zanka's hair is a perfect, private mess. There's blood on his front teeth. Jabber can see it when he speaks and his lips curl jus' right around his accent. He tilts his head, studying Jabber with that unnerving stillness that they both know is entirely composed of little white lies Zanka tells himself in a bid to seem normal.
“Yeah?” Zanka questions, “y'let me touch you in a fight. Way more than this.”
Jabber's face scrunches up and he blinks, hard, three times. “Pfft, well, shit's different.”
“How? Tell me how.”
“Zanka.”
Jabber stops it before it starts. Runs his hands down his face, pushes his locs out of his eyes and, brick by brick, rebuilds the mask. Comes back from the brink with over-the-top, flirtatious confidence.
“Heh, Jabber's jus' too irresistible, huh? Can't keep y'hands to yourself,” Jabber mutters it with a twitch that might be drugs and might not be. “Figures.”
Zanka doesn't take the bait. Doesn't laugh. Doesn't speak at all. Lets the silence sit until, as always, Jabber's own swagger and bravado chews itself up and he crumbles.
Jabber's voice drops. Suddenly human.
“I can't…do this.”
Not Jabber.
I.
Zanka's throat works.
And he decides, then, not to push the boundary Jabber's already flinched from. Let's silence settle and dawn break on two feral things learning the edges of something that isn't violence.
Jabber stands. Sits. Paces. He's not in distress, no. Zanka would know if he was, the world would know if he was. He's just…shaking off the overexertion of existence. Wringing his nerves out like wet laundry in his own interpretive dance. Jabber shakes his limbs out, shakes his hands, sniffs, and then goes about the room looking for his bloody shirt.
Behind him, Zanka mutters:
“Y'know. Wrong tense, there.”
Jabber pauses. “Eh?”
Zanka curls up in his own warmth. “You said you can't. But you already did.”
A beat. Jabber takes that in. Chews it up. Whatever that means.
Then, scoffs. Weird and flustered.
“Man, shut the fuck up.”
Zanka's heart races at the tone, ears coloring red at the same time Jabber leaves the room. And, ah, here they go again. Neither of them will say it aloud, the truth. But both understand it with an intimacy greater than either of their existence:
Violence is easy.
Touch is impossible.
And, worst of all:
They’re both fucked.