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Zanka tries not to put too much thought into what the two of them are. He tries to avoid grins that feel like too much, wounds that feel like kisses. He tries to avoid a lot of things. It doesn't work. Jabbers below him right now, grunting in pain that to him sounds like moans, and between them, maybe exchanging blows is the same thing as sex. Jabber never seems to mind the pain, though. Jabber never seems to mind a lot of things. When they're done, when they've exhausted themselves to the point that both of them are panting, breathing in sync like they're pushing themselves together, Jabber pushes himself up to his elbows.
He brings his fingers up to Zanka's lips, and for a second, Zanka considers punching him again. He swipes with his thumb, dragging the blood that had spilled from his nose across his face. He tries to pretend that he didn't lean into it. Tries to act like this doesn't mean anything, but in reality, if whatever this was stopped, he would miss it.
“You ever think about what it would be like to crawl in between someone's ribs?” He says, and he drags a rough and calloused hand down his chest, he brings slender fingers to feel across his ribcage.
“No,” Zanka answers honestly. He thinks it would be suffocating.
Jabber grins at him, “I have. A lot.”
“Why’d you ask me then?”
The calloused hands that were feeling across his ribs still for a moment, and Zanka tries not to hate the way he misses the motions.
“Would you let me?” Jabber asks, rather than answering his question.
“Let you what? Live inside my ribs?”
He expects a laugh of some kind; he expects another fight to break out. But instead, Jabber just looks at him. There's something strange about it; the lighting makes him look like he's glowing, and Zanka can't seem to look away from him. His eyes are so serious, they look like they want to swallow him whole. They look like they want a lot. For a moment, Zanka is scared. For a moment, it feels like Jabber's eyes are black holes that are drawing him in closer and closer. There's something strangely normal to this. Something that to the two of them feels domestic. This violence, which is more than love or lust, morphs the eyes that bore into his soul right now.
“Would you?” Jabber asks again, it feels desperate, it feels like he's begging for something that Zanka doesn't know the answer to. He doesn't know what to say yet, so he just keeps looking at him.
“Sure.” Zanka tries, desperate to avoid whatever this is. He goes to get up, moves his hands away. Jabber's hand—the one that was on his ribs—shoots up to his wrist. He can feel the raised scars on his hands, rougher than seemed possible; he was holding on. He doesnt understand whats happening. Zanka squints, a frown on his face
“Think about it for longer than that.”
“Why’s it matter?”
Why does this one thing seem to matter so much? What difference does his answer make? But he doesn't want to half-ass this anymore, especially not when it seems important. So he thinks about it, He thinks about what it would be like to have somebody—Jabber—underneath his skin. It would feel claustrophobic, they'd be fighting for space all the time, and when one shifted, arguments would break out. That claustrophobia doesn't seem bad. It's nothing different from what they already do; if the only change was that they share the same skin, it wouldn't really make anything different.
“Ok. Fine. Here's my answer.”
Jabber keeps staring at him, keeps waiting for something, and Zanka has to steady himself for a moment. He doesn't know why.
“I think it would be constant fighting. I think I'll never get any rest.”
Something shifts in Jabber's face, something that Zanka never wants to see again because he swears that Jabber looks like something worse than scared, he looks hurt. He looks like he's in pain, and so he tries to strangle that pain out, tries to cover up the real hurt with hurt that's at least the closest the two of them can get to love.
“And I'd like it.”
He hadn't meant to say it like that; he had originally just wanted to say something like ‘I wouldn't hate it’ or ‘I'd tolerate it,’ but—he supposes that what came out was the truth. Of course, sometimes the truth is scarier than anything else. Lying is easy; being cruel is easy. Especially because cruelty is what so many people down here default to. He grew up cruel too; he grew up hardened by his siblings. By the warpath they were on, marked by his failure, marked by what they called love.
Jabber grins at him, and Zanka feels like hitting him again. But for them, isn't that the same as a kiss on the cheek, or the same thing as lovers—much softer than the two of them—having intercourse? Isn't blood the same thing as a sign of pleasure for both of them? Isn't the bruises they leave on each other the same thing as leaving a hickey on your partner? Maybe kissing for the two of them would feel more like hitting to normal people. Maybe this isn't a battle to reach softness—maybe it's just the two of them. Jabber's hand returns to his face, and Zanka loosens the grip that he has on Lovely, if only to grab at Jabber's wrist. He's gotten used to the feeling of raised skin underneath his own fingertips, and he won’t ask about them—no matter the number that resides on his skin. He swears that on days when Jabber is rougher and more desperate, the number has increased. But he won’t ask about it, because he’s not sure if it’s allowed.
In this—whatever this is—he's not sure where the boundaries begin. Where bloody violence turns into pressing close together begins, or where soft conversations—not unlike these—end.
Jabber looks down at his own arm, captured around Zanka's pale hand, and stares. Zanka, for a moment, thinks he's done something wrong. His fingers twitch, a moment of unconfidence in a sea of existing doubt. Jabber notices. Because he always does, even if it's through a medicated haze of mania, he notices.
“You can ask. I won't stop you.”
“I won't." He's quick to say, and it's not like he's not curious. But he's equally intent on keeping this calm, on not pushing boundaries between the two of them because now the panic’s setting in. Now the reality of what's happening is quickly caving in on Zanka, and he thinks that it might be time to run.
Jabber smiles, like that was the answer he expected Zanka to give. It pisses him off all over again, makes him angry enough that he presses in with Lovely, and the grin on Jabber's face gets even wider.
“I won't ask ya,” Zanka repeats
“Okay,” Jabber says, but it somehow sounds like knowing. It sounds like awareness, security, and worst of all understanding. Like Jabber knows, somehow, what Zanka will do. It's in this terrible thing that Zanka realizes is love means clairvoyance about the other person.
He doesn't let go of Jabber's wrist. He doesn't run. He doesn't say anything. He runs his fingernails along raised scars, along bumps and ridges that stick out and spread all the way up, up, and far further than Zanka wants to look.
“Are all of these from yourself?” He caves, because he always does.
Jabber keeps smiling, and Zanka wants to pull him out of the grins he slips into, wants to shove poisons and toxics that make his head go loopy so far away that Jabber will have no choice but to be real, but to be honest.
“Most of them,” Jabber concedes, a grin still plastered onto his face like a mask. “Some are from you.”
Zanka wants to feel appalled at that, and wants to find it upsetting, but Jabber doesn't say it with any malice. He says it softly, he says it with a tone that makes Zanka think that Jabber can find a way to be gentle.
“And the rest?” Zanka can't help the words slipping out, so he tries again, tries to be softer, “Where are the rest from?”
“I could show you.”
Zanka swallows, swears that he can feel where his Adam's apple bobs in his own throat, and nods. So Jabber moves, Zanka's fingernails slip away from the scars, and if he had been high like Jabber was, he would've missed the way that Jabber's hands shook as he removed his shirt.
Zanka had seen people with a lot of scars, and Zanka had seen people with bad scars. Zanka had seen the cracks that run up Rudo's arms, the thin lines that paint Riyo's legs, and the sharp and jagged lines that run across Enjin's head. Zanka had not seen scars like this. He gets now, why Jabber was shaking, why his mania was so much more today, because, of course, Jabber figured that it would end up like this.
Zanka wants to do a lot of things: run, surge closer, punch him, and hold him. Zanka does none of those things; Zanka lets Jabber stare at him, lets him shake for a moment before grabbing his hand. On his palms and fingertips, there are little raised scars. He presses one of them lightly, a silent question.
“My vital”
Zanka nods, and his hands go upwards, settling on scars upon scars that spread across his arm. Raised and what most would judge, Zanka only finds himself looking at beauty. It's such a startling thought that he presses into one of them, and Jabber's eyes flick to his hands rather than his face for a moment.
“Myself.”
Zanka nods and runs his hands further. On his shoulder, there's a large scar, which, without meaning to Zanka, brings Jabber so much closer. He presses his palm to it, and Jabber shudders a little.
“Zodyl”
Zanka pauses his hands and looks up at Jabber. He's back in that moment of uncertainty, of not knowing what he's allowed to push for versus what Jabber would rather keep locked away in his chest. Jabber looks at him and stares as if waiting for a question. Zanka gives, like he always does, when it comes to him.
“Why?”
“I made him mad,” Jabber gives, and Zanka wants more, so he keeps his hand pressed into it. If Jabber wanted to glare, it's cut off by the drag of mania that seeps into him. “Sometimes, it's better for him to hurt me than it is for me to hurt myself. Sometimes it—”
“Sometimes it?” He tries, gently, as gently as he can be. Which isn't much, because Zanka was never taught how to be gentle, he wasnt taught how to be soft. And all of this—this support, the cleaners, Jabber, is new. It's scary, it makes him want to turn tail and run. But he won't. He cant.
Jabber shakes his head. Zanka is not sure if that's a later or a never. He doesn't pry. He moves his hands over to Jabber's chest, pressing down on scratches, lines that drag all over the expanse of him. Still, the only word that comes to Zanka's mind is beautiful. He doesn't move his hands down; he can see the peaking of scars that continue downwards, and he knows that he'll get the story for those. But not today.
In some weird way, he thinks that he can justify his next actions very easily. Zanka brings Jabber's hands forward and kisses every scar that he can on them. He moves upwards, every rough ridge and bump coming to meet his lips, and it feels somehow better than just a regular kiss; it feels like he's conveying everything without needing to say a word. He pushes up further, he looks up at Jabber, and even while buzzed, Zanka can see the red that seeps into his face, the shudders that he gives with every breath that Zanka lets out over his arms. He kisses the one on his shoulder, once, twice, then three times.
It's not sexual, it's not demanding, he just wants to tell Jabber that his hands don't need to shake anymore, that Zanka will find all of these beautiful. It's strange, it's soft. But it's them.
“Don't you need to get back to the cleaners?”
He thinks of his friends, he thinks of the normal pressing demand to be doing something, and finds that all that really matters to him is the person in front of him. It's terrifying; it makes him want to run, but with every shaky breath that Jabber lets out, Zanka finds himself glued to his side.
“They can wait.”