Chapter Text
The first thing Zanka learned about love was that it was quiet.
Hiding itself in lowered eyes across dinner tables, in prayers echoeing across the walls, in the way his mother changed the television channel whenever two men held hands for longer than a second. It lived inside the pauses before his father said people like that, as though giving the words names would somehow invite them into the house.
The only time love was ever brought up was to talk about the wrongness of it. What wasn't love and what never will be love.
By the time he was ten, he'd memorized every verse his parents ever quoted at him. By thirteen, he'd memorized them better than they had.
By fifteen, he could recite them while politely smiling.
Highschool was supposed to feel different.
Everyone said it would.
"You'll finally meet your people."
"Nobody cares who you are there."
"You can reinvent yourself."
The campus brochures had smiling faces and impossible sunsets, perfect examples of how highschool was ment to feel. According to the movies, atleast.
Zanka walked through those same courtyards every morning with headphones on and his shoulders squared.
He met Jabber during orientation.
Or rather Jabber met him.
"You're walking like someone's about to mug you."
Zanka looked over.
A boy with gorgeously long dreaded hair, atleast five stupidly flashy piercings, and an oddly good sense of style was matching his pace with an effortless grin.
"I've got twenty bucks."
"...Congratulations."
"You look like you'd fight someone over twenty bucks."
"I would."
"I knew it."
The stranger beamed.
"I'm Jabber."
"..."
"..."
"...You gonna tell me your name or should I just start calling you Eyebrows?"
"My eyebrows aren't unusual."
"They're shaped like a fence."
"They're eyebrows."
"So?"
"..."
"...Zanka."
"See? Wasn't that hard."
It had, actually.
Talking to strangers always felt like being stuck in a box where only the outside viewer could see through it. What they felt, shit, even what he himself felt was always too hard to convey or understand. Zanka's parents always told him he'd get over it soon.
All he learned was how to pretend. But, hey, everyone pretends. It's not like zanka's different from anyone else or anything.
That would be stupid.
They kept running into each other.
Same literature lecture.
Same history seminar.
Same terrible cafeteria coffee.
Eventually, it stopped being coincidence.
"Sit with us."
"I already have somewhere-"
"No you don't."
"..."
"I can tell."
"..."
"Come on."
Jabber smiled like a winner. It fit his face beautifully.
If zanka squinted hard enough, the boy almost looked like a woman. Too bad he had to act like such an idiot, didn't fit a womans role at all.
If anything the way jabber acted was infuriating.
Speaking before thinking which always lead to fights in classrooms.
Laughing too loudly at things that weren't even funny to the sober mind.
Forgetting deadlines or skipping school so much to the point he never realised what had to be done and what didn't.
Borrowed pens without asking. Always gave it back chewed up at the end too.
Constantly invading personal space, Zanka's specifically.
And somehow that lazy, stupid, ugly,- boy- was some kind of genius.
Noticing everything, literally everything!
"You didn't sleep."
"I did."
"You've got those little half-moons under your eyes."
"I'm fine."
"You say 'fine' like someone at a funeral."
...
"You skipped breakfast."
"No."
"You just drank coffee."
"That's breakfast."
"Emo."
Weeks became months.
Months became routine.
Routine became friendship.
Its not as if Zanka actually tried or wanted to become friends with Jabber, ugh, as if! The weirdo just wouldnt leave him alone, and when he did, Zanka just kept noticing him everywhere again.
"You free after class?"
"No."
"Liar."
"I have reading."
"You finished it yesterday."
"..."
"...How do you know that?"
"You always finish everything early."
"..."
"You also pretend to hate hanging out."
"I do."
"You don't."
"..."
"...Maybe."
"I win."
"You didn't win anything."
"I won your honesty."
"..."
"That's worth something."
Zanka looked away before Jabber could notice how warm his face had suddenly become.
He should've noticed then.
Should've realized.
God makes no mistakes, its up to Gods creations wether or not they wanna live a filthy life full of sins or a life fulfilling their true purpose.
Jabber and Zanka were best friends.
Best friends think about each other.
Best friends smile.
Best friends wait outside lecture halls.
Best friends memorize coffee orders.
Best friends know each and every curve on eachothers body.
The church his parents attended sat twenty minutes from campus, every Sunday, no excuses.
His father still expected him home at the right time with his tucked in shirt and that little phrase "yes, sir" he had to repeat everytime he was spoken to.
Still expected daughters-in-law, and grandchildren, normality or whatever they called it.
The pastor spoke calmly, kindly even. Such a shame the words coming out of his mouth had the ability to hurt Zanka in such ways.
"Temptation is not identity."
Heads nodded.
"You are stronger than sinful desires."
More nodding.
"God does not make mistakes."
Zanka's fingers tightened around the wooden pew.
Because if God didn't make mistakes...
Then why...
Why did every sermon make him feel like one?
Monday morning.
"You look awful."
"I'm touched."
"You crying?"
"No."
"Liar."
"..."
"...Family?"
Silence.
Jabber sighed.
"You don't have to tell me."
"I know."
"But?"
"But I wish you would."
Zanka stared at the vending machine.
"I don't know how."
Jabber didn't answer immediately, instead he merely bumped their shoulders together.
"You don't always need words."
For one dangerous, terrifying, wonderful second, Zanka almost dared lean back.
Jabber was his safe space, he could be himself, out of all people he'd be the last person to judge him.
It's not as easy as people make it out to seem. Or maybe it was and zanka was just... different.
Thats stupid.
Instead he stepped away.
"...Sorry."
Jabber blinked.
"For what?"
"I..."
How could Zanka possibly answer a question, he didnt know the answer to himself?
Everything felt like something he should apologize for, an example: existing.
It was as if he was eight years old again, mother brushing his hair before church.
"You'll make some girl very happy someday."
He remembered smiling, i mean, all eight-year-olds smile when their trusted adults tell them who they'll become.
The dreams shifted.
Jabber stood smiling in the church aisle instead. Holding out that rough hand of his, rings glinting is the reflection of colourfull windows. A rainbow-ish glow shining on the jewelery Zanka loved to kiss during sleepovers. A dissapointment no one else seemed able to see jabber, as the man looked particularly beautifull in Zanka's imagination.
"Come on."
Zanka's feet were rooted beneath the pew, father and pastor behind him. Breathing down his neck despite the odd feeling of emptyness behind him.
The congregation watched silently as Jabber smiled without a care in the world, like he was God, like he was the creator and made his own rules, expecting people to just bend down to him.
Maybe he was just expecting people to act on their own and ignore his anticts. I mean, why would anyone genuinely care about what jabber was doing when he wasnt directly involving or bothering anyone? Zanka thought about that alot.
"It's okay."
Zanka wanted to reach out. He truly did.
He didn't answer Jabber's texts that morning.
Or the next.
Or the one after that.
Every thought about Jabber alone made him want to do irriversable things, thoughts alone leading to Zanka wanting to beg and plead for forgiveness to the great alone.
God is everywhere, knows everything, sees everything. God seeps into your dreams and listens to your thoughts.
Every Hey, you alive? Every You skipped class. Every Everything okay? Felt like another chance to tell the truth.
But Zanka had spent seventeen years becoming very good at lying, perfecting it, so much so lying now felt like truth.