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In the afterglow, there was always a brief moment of weightlessness.
He’d be submerged head to toe, warm water weighing him down, lifting him up, his body drifting just below the surface. Unmoored. Breathless. And the freedom of it would be ruined by Zanka's inability to sit still.
He always did this. Always. The fool was Jabber for forgetting each time. The high tide made the fangs recede, chasing the beast back into wherever Zanka kept it caged away. It always left Jabber with this clingy, sappy mess in its place.
Because here he was, miles of bed around them and yet Zanka still splayed out directly on top of him. His arms wrapped around Jabber’s middle like he was trying to hold onto something gelatinous, grip just tight enough that when Jabber shoved at his shoulders, he wouldn’t budge. Those arms were loosely coiled like a baby viper, venomoid and defanged, too weak to constrict.
It was like he developed amnesia every time he came. It made him forget the spiny urchin that Jabber was.
He winced as those lips found a place just under where the bruise was forming on his collar bone. He winced because instead of pressuring the teeth marks or the aching thrum of his pulse point just beside it, Zanka avoided both. As if he hadn't mercilessly bitten those very marks into the flesh there just moments ago. As if the conscience Zanka amputated earlier in the night had suddenly regrown and usurped control. The butterfly kisses were littered as an apology, elaborating on those nonsense words he muttered into various places across Jabber's skin.
Not that Jabber needed a translation, he could feel the thoughts behind each of the pointless sounds. He was drifting in the water, entirely submerged, breathless. And the vibrations would rattle through him in a rhythmic roll, the breaths he didn't want to take. Resuscitation. Again and again and again. And just when he thought it was over, that he could recede back into suffocating depths, again once more.
Zanka believed that there was an inexhaustible fire burning inside of him. And maybe there was. For a moment tonight, it had seemed like there was. Blazing blue, the hottest kind. Earlier a surge of supermassive solar flares had kicked out of him, curled around the bone-deep cold inside Jabber and squeezed it. The molten digits lingered only long enough to carve a constellation of welts in their wake, then pulled away before the burns could reach the third degree.
And Zanka thought that was good. He thought that there was a morning sun in him, and if he leaned in close enough, made his hands weak enough, made his eyes soft enough, then he could somehow cover them both in the warmth. Like he could somehow snip off a piece and keep it bottled, a torch to hold out and light the way. As if he knew the way.
He failed to understand that it simply didn’t work like that. Zanka wasn't a golden sun, he was blue. And Jabber wasn’t a black abyss, he was waterlogged and sodden, salty ocean and tangles of seaweed. He was rocky and cavernous not like a cliff’s edge but like a cave dive, like a sunken ship. Toward the top where the water looked clear you could drag a hand through the wide beams of a pale, babyish shade of blue. His depths were a murky, delft shade, glowing with life so foreign it hardly felt like it all belonged on the same planet. Two different types of blue sloshed inside of him with every step. Two different types of blue in the endless space between them.
They couldn't touch. Couldn't even get close. Each time there would be steam, there would be foggy vapors, there would be the hiss of hot things making contact. What was it called, that quality that made hot water rise to meet the sunny sky?
He hadn’t realized he’d asked it aloud until Zanka finally, finally relinquished the hollow kisses and lifted his head.
“What?”
He huffed, “Nothin’.”
Zanka withdrew more, pulling his elbows under his chest.
“What d’you say?”
"Ugh." Jabber groaned and extracted himself from the jumble of limbs and sheets. Zanka was doing it again. That look on his face. The softening of his eyes as if Jabber had developed amnesia too. Like he could forget the brutal hate that had colored those same eyes in all the hours prior. Wrong. That was the part he never let go of. His forgetting wouldn't come around until next time. So in the meantime it was better if he didn’t look too much. He needed to give in and head back to shore, wash off the sand and the algae.
But Zanka was following, stepping into his shorts, puppy eyes still locked on Jabber. So he stopped in the doorway to the restroom and leveled that ugly look with one of his own.
“Just not enough sun in you to get the water outta me.”
Evaporation! Evaporation, that was the word he'd been looking for. That was what Zanka thought he could do to the ocean filling Jabber's skull.
Never. It didn't matter, though, if it were somehow possible. Because even after all the water was gone there would still be the salt, the glowing fish bones, the pirate ship wreckage.
But of course, that was a few steps ahead of where they’d left off. So Zanka stood there, staring, and Jabber did them both the service of shutting the bathroom door before he could form a response. The shower rainfall was loud. Not enough to drown out the voice outside, but Jabber could sink deeper, and eventually it would fade. All things did.
He hummed as the spray thundered down on his freshly sunkissed skin, a snare-drum to his impromptu set. Burning blue. Supergiant. That would burn out, too.