Work Text:
Zanka hated his job from the very first shift.
Nightclub "Platinum" smelled of sweat, cheap liquor, and other people's hopes. That smell seeped into his clothes, his hair, his skin — it felt impossible to wash off, even after three hours under hot water. Sometimes Zanka thought he could still smell it in the morning, waking up in his cramped dorm room when everything around him was clean and quiet. As if the club was following him, clinging to him like a stranger's shadow.
He'd taken the job only because a normal place required a degree. And he, at nineteen, a college student, had neither a diploma nor any free time. Classes took up his days, leaving only evenings and nights for work.
Here, no degree was needed — just fists, strong nerves, and the ability to pretend you gave a damn. "Bouncer-barback," that's how the manager, nicknamed Som, had phrased his duties.
In practice, that meant: wipe glasses, make sure no one climbs onto the dancers' stage, break up drunken idiots, and smile like you actually care about the customers.
The pay was crap, but enough for his rented dorm room. And for macaroni and canned stew. Sometimes even for coffee — if there were no unexpected expenses like textbooks or another broken lamp in his room.
By the third week, Zanka had stopped noticing the strippers.
And the male strippers, too.
Almost.
He learned to tell regulars from one-time guests, stopped flinching when someone yelled too loudly, and could empty ashtrays without looking at what was happening on stage. His body was here, among the neon and sticky floors, but his mind was somewhere else — somewhere between university lectures and unpaid electricity bills.
Work had become a mechanical ritual.
Come in. Wipe. Pour. Watch. Smile.
Survive.
But that evening, everything went off-script.
"Hey, new guy," Som called out, appearing from behind the service entrance curtain. "We've got a headliner tonight. Don't freak out, he's harmless, but on stage he does god knows what. Just keep an eye out so no one from the crowd tries anything."
Zanka nodded without looking up.
A headliner — the one who usually comes out during the third song, when the crowd is drunk enough to scream and throw money. Usually professional dancers. After three weeks on the job, Zanka had seen enough of them to stop being surprised.
People strip in front of strangers.
Because they need the money.
Need it more than their own dignity.
That night, the club was packed to the brim. The air was thick — smelled of booze, cheap perfume, and something sweet, cloying, like someone upstairs in the VIP rooms was smoking shisha again. The music thrummed in his chest like a second heartbeat.
Zanka was wiping yet another glass when a slow, drawling melody came on — something with a ragged R'n'B beat. The music wrapped around him, made his body sway involuntarily. He looked up — more out of habit than interest.
The lights went out.
For a moment, everything drowned in darkness.
Then pink neon flared — sticky, syrupy. In that light, even ordinary things looked alien, and human bodies seemed almost unreal.
A guy in a long black cloak walked onto the stage.
Tall. Thin. Heavy dreads pulled back into a low ponytail. A few strands fell over his face, hiding it almost completely. Rings glinted on his hands — on every finger, on the last knuckle. The metal shimmered dully in the pink light, casting tiny reflections onto his bronze skin.
He moved as if his body had no weight. As if he was letting the floor pull every step out of him. His hands floated through the air, fingers trembling like he was playing an invisible instrument.
The crowd went quiet. Even the drunkest ones stopped yelling.
The cloak fell first.
Zanka nearly dropped his glass.
Underneath were leather briefs, fishnet knee-highs, and a black suspender slung over one bare shoulder. In the pink neon, the guy's skin looked almost translucent — ribs and collarbones standing out. He was thin to the point of sickness, to the point of fragility.
But that's not what made Zanka's blood rush south.
It was the face.
He recognized those cheekbones a second before the guy turned around.
Jabber. Jabber-fucking-Wonger. That same old classmate who doodled in the margins of his notebooks and once got into a fight with Zanka over the last slice of pizza in the cafeteria. The same one Zanka had been secretly in love with all through tenth and eleventh grade.
To the point of shaky knees. To the point of stupid poems in his phone notes. To the point of "good night" texts he never sent.
Jabber — on stage. In a strip club.
Zanka froze.
The glass slipped from his fingers, but he caught it at the last second — the crystal clinked unpleasantly against the bar top. No one noticed, because everyone was watching the stage.
Jabber moved slowly, almost lazily. He wrapped his thighs — long, thin, with jutting hip bones — around the pole and rolled his hips in a way that made the crowd howl.
Jabber's fingers trailed down his own stomach, paused at the waistband of the leather briefs, tugged the elastic down — and let go immediately. Playing. Teasing. Controlling the audience.
"Holy shit," Zanka breathed out.
Everything inside him flipped.
Not because it was disgusting.
But because it was too much.
Too explicit. Too beautiful. Too wrong.
And because Jabber was smiling.
That same crooked, sly smile Zanka remembered from algebra class. Only now, there was no warmth in it.
Just exhaustion. And emptiness.
Jabber wasn't dancing for the crowd.
He was dancing through them.
His eyes stared somewhere far away — past the heads, past the lights, past all this cheap grandeur. Sometimes his lids would droop, and for a second his face would go lifeless — like a doll's.
Then he'd smile again. Move again. Collect the whistles and the money that flew onto the stage like autumn leaves.
Zanka watched him and couldn't look away.
He remembered how in tenth grade, Jabber came to school with a black eye and said he'd fallen off his bike. How he'd sit on the windowsill during breaks and draw in his notebook. How once, for Zanka's birthday, he'd given him a hand-drawn comic about a bat who was afraid of the dark.
Zanka had laughed then. Stuffed the comic in his backpack. Then cried at home for half an hour, not knowing why.
That Jabber had smelled like cinnamon, sickly-sweet energy drinks, and cigarette smoke.
This one — like club smoke, other people's sweat, and money.
And on stage, as Jabber wrapped his legs around the pole again, Zanka caught himself thinking:
He didn't want to watch this.
Not because it was disgusting.
But because it was wrong.
Jabber shouldn't be here.
Jabber should be sitting on some rooftop somewhere, sketchbook in hand, drawing his comics while the wind tugged at his dreads.
Not writhing under neon lights while drunk men shoved money at him.
When the song ended, Jabber collected the cash from the stage — slowly, almost reluctantly — and disappeared behind the curtain.
The crowd applauded. Someone yelled "Bravo!" Someone whistled.
Som nodded approvingly and wandered off.
And Zanka felt like he couldn't breathe properly even before he fully understood what was happening. The air in the club suddenly felt too thick, too sticky — like he could reach out and touch it. He mechanically wiped another glass, then a second, then a third, even though the glass was already squeaky clean. His hands worked on autopilot, but his mind was still stuck on the stage, on that thin body under the pink light, on the face he'd recognized too quickly and too unmistakably.
He kept working for a while — twenty glasses, five whiskeys, three tequilas, someone's irritated complaint, someone's laughter, the crash of broken glass. It all passed him by like through murky water. He answered, nodded, moved, but inside, only one thing remained: a name he was afraid to say out loud.
Jabber.
When the shift slowed down a little, and the flow of customers eased for a few minutes, Zanka finally made up his mind. It felt like jumping into cold water — scary at first, then too late to turn back. He walked around the bar, gave a short nod to one of the bouncers, and slipped through the service corridor to the back door of the club.
Outside, it was cooler than inside, and the fresh air hit his face almost painfully. Behind the club was a small smoking area — a concrete patch with a metal fence and an old streetlamp that flickered like it was about to give out for good. That's where employees usually gathered to catch their breath, smoke a cigarette, or just escape the noise for a few minutes.
Tonight, only one person was sitting there.
Jabber was perched on a concrete block, one leg tucked under him, shoulders slightly hunched like he was cold. Over his nearly bare body, he'd thrown on an oversized sweater — clearly someone else's, because the sleeves were rolled up in multiple layers and still hung down past his fingers. His dreads had come loose, several strands escaping the ponytail and falling over his face. In his hands, he held a carton of orange juice and sipped it lazily through a straw.
In the weak light of the streetlamp, he looked less pale than he had on stage.
Zanka stopped a few steps away, unable to get closer. He suddenly felt like an awkward teenager again — that same fifteen-year-old idiot who couldn't string two words together next to the person he was in love with.
Jabber didn't even look up.
"You gonna keep staring?" he asked calmly, almost lazily, without changing his position. His voice came out raspy, like he'd been shouting all night, even though he'd barely made a sound on stage. "My shift ended five minutes ago. If you want an encore, fair warning — it's expensive."
Zanka stepped forward, feeling his heart start pounding somewhere in his throat. He tried to come up with a normal line, something simple and natural, but his tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth.
"You don't recognize me?" he finally managed.
Jabber looked up.
A second. Then another.
At first, irritation flickered in his gaze — practiced, reflexive, like someone who was used to being stared at. But then his expression slowly changed. Recognition didn't come all at once — it seemed to rise up from somewhere deep in his memory.
His lips twitched, curling into that familiar, slightly mocking smile.
"Zan-Zan?" he drawled, squinting a little. "Seriously? Mr. Grumpy himself? The one who loved to fight with me? Who always paired up with me in gym class and then pretended it was an accident?"
Zanka snorted in annoyance, even though something inside him clenched with a strange warmth that rose up from his chest.
"Shut up, Jabb," he muttered, feeling his ears betray him by growing warm. He knew he was blushing and hated himself for it, but there was nothing he could do. "And... don't tell anyone I work here. Okay?"
Jabber huffed and took another sip of juice, not taking his eyes off him.
"I won't," he said with a light smirk. "That'd be pretty stupid, considering my job."
Despite the tension, Zanka couldn't help but snort. It was funny to hear that — almost like before, when they'd sit in the back of the classroom and Jabber would draw weird pictures in his notebook instead of listening to the teacher.
He slowly lowered himself onto the concrete block next to Jabber, feeling the cold seep through his jeans.
A few seconds of silence passed.
"You... been here long?" Zanka finally asked, nodding toward the club.
"Three months," Jabber answered calmly, staring somewhere into the darkness beyond the fence. "Pay's decent. Owner doesn't mess with me. Clients are hit or miss, but security usually kicks out the ones who get too handsy. So it's livable."
Zanka turned his head toward him.
"Livable?" he repeated quietly. "You dance in front of a crowd of drunk guys who look at you like a piece of meat, and you call that 'livable'?"
Jabber slowly turned to face him. Something hard flickered in his gaze — brief, like a knife slash.
"What are you, my mother?" he asked quietly. "I didn't ask you to judge me. And I didn't ask you to come here at all."
"I work here," Zanka snapped.
"Oh, right, yeah," Jabber drawled, giving him a slow, deliberate once-over. There was something challenging in the movement, almost defiant. "You don't look like a bouncer. Too pretty."
"I'm behind the bar," Zanka said shortly. "And you're messing with me, aren't you?"
"A little," Jabber admitted calmly.
They fell silent again, and the quiet suddenly grew heavy, almost thick. Somewhere beyond the fence, a car honked briefly — the sound jarringly loud in the night stillness. Zanka couldn't help watching every small movement Jabber made — the way he licked his lips after a sip of juice, the slight tilt of his head, the way he pushed a stray strand of hair back from his face.
And that's when he noticed it.
The tremor.
Jabber's hands were shaking — barely perceptibly, but enough that it couldn't be written off as nothing. The rings clinked softly against each other as he set the carton down on the concrete. The movement was short, almost invisible, but Zanka couldn't look away now.
He shifted his gaze to Jabber's face.
His pupils were strangely dilated, even though it was dark out and the streetlamp wasn't that bright.
"Jabb..." he called out carefully.
"What?" came the immediate reply.
"You okay?"
"Perfect," Jabber said too quickly. "Just cold."
It was about fifteen degrees outside. No real cold at all.
Zanka didn't say anything.
But he filed it away.
Somewhere deep inside, like a warning he couldn't ignore.
"You know..." Jabber suddenly said.
He rose from the concrete block slowly, like it wasn't the first time that night and every movement was already registering as fatigue in his body. For a few seconds, he stood still, then stepped forward — so close there was almost no air left between them.
Zanka felt his breath on his cheek. Warm, uneven, tasting of orange and club smoke. He smelled of something bitter — like wormwood or cheap liquor that had soaked into his skin. The rings on his fingers clinked softly as Jabber raised a hand to push a stray dreadlock back from his face.
"I remember a lot," he continued, a little quieter, and something weary crept into his mocking tone. "About you."
Zanka froze.
"Like what?" he asked, and his own voice sounded too quiet, almost foreign.
Jabber tilted his head slightly, studying his face like he was remembering something long forgotten.
"The way you looked at me," he said finally. "In the locker room. After gym class. You think I didn't notice? I was just waiting for you to finally man up. But you never did. You just disappeared after graduation. Didn't even friend me on anything. Coward."
The word landed softly, almost without malice, but that only made it hurt more. Zanka felt everything inside him clench.
Suddenly, dozens of memories flooded his mind — short, fragmented, painfully vivid. Glances across the classroom, accidental brushes in the hallway, awkward attempts at conversation, and the constant fear that someone would notice him staring too long. He remembered everything. Every small thing. Every stupid moment.
And especially — the moment after graduation, when he couldn't bring himself to send that first message.
He ran.
Pretended it had all been a childish crush.
"I didn't..." he started, but the words died in his throat.
Inside him, two voices screamed at once.
The first — cold, cautious — whispered: "Leave. You saw his hands. His eyes. You saw he's hiding something."
The second — dull, stubborn — murmured: "You've been waiting for this for two years. Don't be an idiot."
He listened to neither.
He just stepped forward.
Grabbed Jabber by the collar of that oversized sweater — the fabric rough and foreign under his fingers — and pulled him close.
The kiss came out harsh, almost rough. Too fast, too hungry — like he was trying to make up for two lost years in a single second. The taste was unexpected: orange juice, a hint of tobacco bitterness, and something else — unfamiliar, strange, troubling.
Jabber didn't resist.
On the contrary — he laughed softly right against Zanka's lips, a short, almost nervous sound. His hands slid up Zanka's shoulders, the ringed fingers cold against his cheek. He kissed back with confidence, like he'd done it a thousand times before, like his body knew every move by heart.
Zanka threaded his fingers through Jabber's dreads — the hair rough, tangled, smelling of cheap shampoo and smoke. He didn't know how much time passed — seconds or minutes. The world around them seemed to disappear, dissolving into this brief, too-tense closeness.
When they finally pulled apart, Jabber was breathing hard, but his expression remained strangely calm. Almost indifferent. He leaned closer, almost brushing Zanka's ear with his lips.
"Just one condition," he whispered.
Zanka froze again.
"Don't actually fall in love with me. Okay?"
The words landed with unexpected seriousness, none of his usual mockery. There was something heavy in them, almost resigned — like a warning that had already come too late.
Zanka wanted to say something clever. Something light, to break the tension. Something like "don't worry, I'm a big boy." But his tongue failed him again.
Because somewhere deep down, he could already feel that old feeling — the one he'd tried so hard to bury — rising back to the surface.
"Too late," he said quietly.
And kissed him again.
Slower this time. More carefully. Like he was trying to memorize the sensation — the taste, the warmth of another's lips, the soft breath against his face.
Jabber froze for a second. Then kissed him back. And there was so much desperation in that kiss that Zanka's heart clenched.
Somewhere inside the club, a new song started playing. Glass shattered. Someone shouted at someone else — sharp, irritated. The world kept moving, kept making noise, kept living its ordinary life.
But here, under the dim light of the flickering streetlamp, everything seemed frozen.
They stood too close to each other — two former classmates who had no idea what they'd just gotten themselves into.
Later, when Jabber tugged him by the hand toward the bus stop, Zanka barely resisted. He followed, still dazed by what had just happened, trying to understand what exactly had just occurred and why he felt both so warm and so uneasy inside.
The night around them seemed unusually quiet. Even the city seemed to have gone still for a moment, giving them space to walk in this strange, tense silence.
And that's when Zanka noticed it.
The movement was short, almost imperceptible.
As they walked, Jabber slipped his hand into his pocket and quickly pulled out a small plastic baggie. At the bottom, a white powder gleamed — just a little, like the remnants of something almost used up.
He tucked it back in just as fast. Too fast for a random motion. Zanka's heart seemed to drop somewhere into his stomach.
He didn't say a word.
Didn't ask.
Because he was afraid of the answer.
Afraid of hearing confirmation of what he already understood.
From that moment on, he knew one thing — clearly and without doubt:
Jabber was falling.
And he, Zanka, stood right beside him, at the very edge of that same abyss, staring down — and somehow couldn't look away, ready to jump right after him.