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The night had started so well.
A couple of friends, meeting up to share and discuss common interests, as all upstanding young members of society are expected to do from time to time, to keep them from becoming reclusive homebodies.
Well, Jabber supposed they were as close to ‘friends’ as he tended to get. He’d made many of his friends the same way, aggravated assault, with a subtle dash of petty thievery.
Amo didn’t seem to mind, though.
She lost her shit at him. He stole her shit from her. She tried to kill him. He beat the crap out of her. Yada yada yada, water under the hatchet, and all that other crap.
They were as close to ‘friends’ as friends could be in Jabber’s book, avidly engaging in each other’s company as they bonded over their very healthy and upstanding common interests…
Which were drugs.
Well, inhalants, to be precise. Although Amo preferred to call them ‘perfumes.’ Bottles upon bottles of them scattered about the floor like a kaleidoscopic rainbow; colored glass and painted porcelain, some with intricate spray-dispensers and others with tops shaped like flowers, with faux-gold petals that caught the dying rays of the sun peeking through Amo’s bedroom window.
Jabber couldn’t help but admire them all in their pretty little rows as he stared up at them from the floor. He and Amo had collapsed into a pile of giggles courtesy of a brew he had brought as a house-warming gift, the empty flask now discarded several feet from their twitching bodies.
He heard Amo hiccuping softly as he turned to flop onto his back and stare up at the ceiling in amazement.
There’s no way the Cleaners knew she had all this shit up here, right?
Between all the chemicals and equipment Amo had strewn about here, she could easily be running a meth lab under all this, and no one would be able to tell the difference. So either the Cleaners were even dumber than he thought they were,
Or they were a lot more fun, and he might’ve picked his team too early. He supposed it wasn’t too late for a career change…
“Jabber,” Amo slurred, still a bit giggly, “Amo has something she wants to show you, too.”
She wobbled onto her hands and knees and jaunted merrily over to a trunk at the foot of her bed, throwing the lid up and excavating a small, rose-colored vial from its depths.
“Amo’s been working on this for ages,” she spouted happily, trotting back towards him with the vial clutched tightly in one hand, “It’s almost perfect now! Amo made it like the nice smell from Amo’s boots, because she wants people to remember their love.”
“Love?” Jabber parroted, with a grin and a cocked brow, “Sorry, Mosey- but that kinda stuff doesn’t work on me. You should know this by now.”
Jabber poked a finger in between her furrowed brows as Amo puffed her cheeks in indignation.
“This one will! Amo knows it! Amo just wants Jabber to feel loved- she thinks Jabber would like it.”
Love, huh…
Jabber thinks he’s felt something pretty close. It’s not the warm, ooey-gooey, marshmallow-centered feeling Amo likes talking about so much, but it gets his heart racing and makes his cheeks feel hot.
The thrill of the fight. When you’re evenly matched with a twin flame, burning so bright, every movement is a fire hazard.
Spit and vitriol flying from that prim and proper mouth like bats escaping the pits of hell.
Teeth like pearls, scraping themselves raw to clench around living steel in a violent act of desperate fury.
Assistaff biting into his organs as Zanka shoves her impossibly deeper into his ribs, her hard lines squeezing the breath from his chest like a leash around his lungs.
Could anything feel more lovely?
More perfect?
More all-consuming?
Jabber couldn’t imagine it. Whatever melty, pillowy, cloud-filled daydream Amo had stuffed inside this vial, Jabber had no doubt it would dissolve into nothingness, like cotton candy into water, before it even reached his nostrils, let alone his mind.
Besides, Amo’s boots targeted memories of loved ones, and Jabber didn’t really have any of those.
No memories of a lover caressing him by a beach.
No memories of a father teaching him how to play catch,
Or of a mother singing him to sleep.
He couldn’t remember anyone who may have loved him, or if they had even existed. And if he couldn’t remember them, then they probably weren’t that important anyway.
But despite his internal monologue, Jabber simply resigned himself to watch with disinterest as Amo struggled with the cork of the vial, her fingers seemingly still giddy from their last dose.
“C’mon…. C’monnnn, Amo wants you to open- Oh! Amo got it!” Amo exclaimed as the cork flew from her grasp with a small ‘pop.’
Immediately, the liquid inside began to bubble, a silvery foam erupting and spilling from the lip of the vial and onto the floor.
“It’s hot!”
Amo’s hands jumped as the vial fell with a clatter, the invisible vapors swallowing up the room like a tidal wave, drowning Jabber in an aroma he had never smelled before.
At least… he doesn’t remember smelling it.
It smelled… warm. So warm it made his insides feel icy in comparison.
Amo said that this would help him remember someone he loved,
But he couldn’t remember anything.
All he could see was darkness…
And warmth…
The warmth was touching him now. It was holding onto his arms. It was looking at him, whispering things to him. It was telling him things would be okay.
But it didn’t have a face.
Jabber couldn’t see its face.
It was talking to him, but he couldn’t understand the words. Couldn’t hear the pitch of its voice, or the tone or the language or the way its tongue traced around the vowels or how it said his name.
There was so much love for him in those eyes…
Their eyes…
What color were they? What was their shape?
Were they brown? Blue? Were they red like his? Did they even have eyes?
Were they even real?
He could’ve made them up.
It’s not impossible.
He’s done worse.
Those brown blue red eyes are a trick of his imagination. Those eyes aren’t looking at him, and he doesn’t know them either.
Just like the voice in his ears that he can’t hear.
And the palms grasping his forearms that have no texture and no shape, but are so, so warm.
Those are tricks, too.
This was a bad trip.
A really, really bad trip that feels too wet and too hot and too mushy and real and there right up inside his throat.
There’s no face he can’t see, no voice he can’t understand, no arms holding him tight.
It’s just warm, so warm.
And he’s so cold… he never noticed how cold he was-
“Jabber!”
The haze of Jabber’s mind lifts like a veil as he hears a window snap open, the concentration of vapor in the room quickly diluting as it begins to escape the space. Amo, hands white-knuckled against the windowframe, looking back at him with eyes wet and brimming with concern.
“Are you okay? Amo’s super super super sorry, but you weren’t moving, and then you started-”
“I gotta go,”
Jabber cut her off, clambering to his feet and lightly shoving her away from the window so he could slip out. Once his feet hit the ground, he started running.
He couldn’t see where he was going. He didn’t really care either.
All he knew was that he could still feel those warm hands curled around his shoulders and his windpipe like a python, and he needed to get away from it.
He wove through the shadowed streets and rooftops overlooking the now-bustling night market till he finally found a deserted-looking alley. He threw himself into it, letting his back hit against the brick wall with a ‘thud’ as he sank to the floor, panting like an animal on the run. Chest heaving violently.
He fisted the front of his shirt as he willed himself to breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe and calm down.
That wasn’t real.
None of that was real.
None of it…
Jabber was unsure how long he sat there, soaking the cigarette-butt littered ground with his sweat. He was about to awaken Mankira for a bit of self-medicating when he heard the steady rhythm of footsteps approaching.
So much for ‘deserted.’
Jabber looked up to tell this new guest to his pity-party-of-one to kindly ‘fuck off,’ only to meet a pair of familiar eyes.
Two blue, real eyes. Staring down at him in wonder.
“I didn’t know you could cry,” Zanka said, sounding genuinely shocked, leaning down to examine Jabber’s face.
Jabber was surprised too, as he rubbed his hand along his cheek and found it came away wet with tears.
“Why are you here?” he grumbled out, as he began to emphatically rub at the tear tracks with his sleeves.
Zanka sighed.
“Amo. You damn near left her in hysterics. It was either I find you, or she goes running around sobbing your name through the streets.”
Huh. Jabber didn’t think she had actually cared that much.
“Oh… Wait, you-”
“And before you ask,” Zanka interrupted, cutting him off with a hand, “yes, we know about you and Amo’s little ‘hobby.’ Geez- how stupid do you think we are?”
Jabber elected to pick the smart option in not answering that question. Despite how all their previous meetings had gone, Jabber really wasn’t in the mood to fight, and it didn’t seem like Zanka was either. Despite how the younger boy’s hackles had been raised at the sight of Jabber crying.
But the longer the silence grew, the more Jabber began to doubt his decision.
He wasn’t in the mood to fight, but he might’ve preferred it to this. The awkwardness between them was absolutely suffocating as it permeated the alley, hanging in the air like a lame bird.
Zanka seemed to have grown incredibly interested in his own shoes.
“So…,” Zanka began, elongating the vowel to a theatrical degree as he dug the ball of his foot into the dirt, fidgeting with Assistaff as he clenched and unclenched his fingers along her shaft, “you wanna….talk… about it?”
“No.”
“Great,” he replied, plopping down to join Jabber on the floor as he rested Assistaff along the wall, “because I am not equipped to handle that kind of conversation.”
Jabber blinked at him.
He watched as Zanka made himself comfortable on the grimy floor beside him, when he could literally be doing anything else. Anything, rather than sitting in a disgusting alleyway with Jabber of all people.
“Why… Why are you still here?”
Zanka shrugged.
“I can’t just leave you here, Dreads. You’re not supposed to leave someone you find crying.”
“Why not? You totally could,” Jabber urged, becoming increasingly baffled by this strange train of logic. But Zanka only shrugged again and replied in a preppy voice as if mimicking an etiquette instructor,
“ ‘It’s not the way things are done.’ Besides, you’ve already ruined my night, so I might as well stick around,”
He produced a small metal tin from the folds of his bag, unscrewed the opening, and shook out two brightly colored candies,
“Want one?”
Jabber tentatively took one of the offered candies from his outstretched hand before the blonde popped the other into his mouth and chewed.
Jabber stared at him. Then at the candy. Then back to Zanka.
And then he began to laugh.
“You-” Jabber stammered out in between chuckles, “ are the strangest guy I have ever met, Zanka.”
“Coming from you? Now I know I’m screwed.”
Jabber wheezed.
His mouth felt thick with saliva and mucus as he popped his own candy into his mouth. Jabber couldn’t recognize the flavor, but the sugar was a nice distraction. Jabber let his head fall back onto the brick wall as he and Zanka stared up at the light pollution shining over the roofs lining the alleyway. The chatter of the night market just outside blurring into a pleasant hum.
“Hey…”
“Hm?”
“You’re not gonna go easy on me next time just because of this, right?”
“Fuck no,” Zanka answered with a grin, his lips even pinker than usual from the sugar and artificial flavoring, “if anything, now that I know you can cry, I’m planning to whale on you. I’ll make you cry so hard, this crap you’re going through will feel like a picnic.”
Jabber smiled.
“I’m looking forward to it. But you’ll actually have to get one over on me first.”
“Dick.”
“Love you too, Zan-Zan.”
Jabber knew he wasn’t ready to handle Love. Not the warm, fuzzy, suffocating kind that had come for him tonight. But this…
Shit-talking and squatting in a decrepit alley.
Cheap sugar on his tongue.
Zanka’s tired eyes, shining in the crappy lighting.
Jabber could work with this.