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random Jon/Zacky ficlet, because they're totally breaking my heart over here.
Title: Focus
Fandom: P!atD + A7X slash
Pairing: Jon/Zacky
Rating: R, for sexual references, swearing and angst.
Summary: it's not about whether or not you can, it about whether or not you will.
Notes: For ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
ogodthe. Even if we never get to play them off each other again lady, it's been amazing. Those two were just breakin' my heart, so I had to give them an at least mildly happy ending here.
"Can't do this anymore," Zacky's voice is stilted and flat, his words jerking themselves out of his throat like someone dropping a handful of little rocks. "You're fucking histrionic, Jon. You're self-absorbed as hell - there's always some drama with you. Everything always has to be about you and your shit. Even when you're apologizing for something, it's always about poor Jon, the fucking victim."
Jon is sitting on the couch across the room from where he is standing, his knees drawn up to his chest, watching him silently. Finally, "I'm sorry you feel that way, lover. I love you, I never wanted it to get this bad between us."
"Maybe you should have fucking tried, then," Zacky snaps in a hot, sharp jolt of anger. Jon makes him so angry. There's someone in there that he loves, he thinks. Maybe. But that person has been drowned in self-pity and clinginess. Jon has become someone who strikes him as pathetic, and the door doesn't slam on his way out. There's just the hiss of air escaping an enclosed space as it shuts, and Jon closes his eyes and smiles.
He sleeps in the bathtub that night, his broad fist clutching a warm bottle of Jack that doesn't have a drop missing.
+++
Jon is an alcoholic. That's what the people at his AA meetings tell him, they tell him that he has no control over his illness and that he needs to give himself over to a 'higher power' and accept his lack of responsibility for himself. Jon doesn't believe in a higher power though - he's always been a fairly devout atheist, and so this strikes him as bullshit. He said so at one of his meetings, he said that people should always be expected to take responsibility for themselves, and felt like a hypocrite even though he glared around them room when he was shushed.
He's been sober for almost three months, though. That's good, he thinks.
He doesn't see Zacky for three full days after their fight, or hear from him. This makes him cry a lot, especially at night when he sleeps in his bathtub because his sheets still smell like Zacky and he can't bring himself to wash them. He always felt guilty for crying in front of Zacky - he felt guilty for guilt-tripping him. It's almost funny, and probably would have been more so if he could just stop fucking crying into the pillow that doesn't quite cushion his head from the tap jutting out from the wall of his bath.
Zacky hits things. He slams into his apartment that night, which is almost empty because more than half his shit is moved into Jon's place because he'd been supposed to move in there soon. Instead, he spends the night smacking around every door that dares to swing without his touch, slamming windows open and shut and not getting any sleep at all on the flat, bare mattress that's all that's left of his bed. The frame is in Jon's living room.
+++
A week. Ryan comes over to Jon's place to try and comfort him by sitting next to him on the couch and letting his slender hand slide into Jon's lap, spidery fingers tracing his cock through the rough denim of his jeans. He whispers into Jon's ear that it's all right, that he loves him even though he's so very flawed because he himself is too, and that it's just a fuck and it will make him feel better. And Jon believes him, right up until Ryan licks around the shell of his ear with a wet, sharp tongue and there's no lip rings in his pouty lower lip.
He pushes Ryan away, babbles something. Ryan smiles and reaches for him again, cocksure that he can make Jon all better, pressing his sweet young face against Jon's thick left thigh and turning it up to face him. "I'll swallow," he offers sweetly, licking his lips, and Jon starts to cry again.
"It's all my fault," he tells Ryan, and Ryan sighs heavily and holds him, gives up.
+++
Zacky tries, too. He tries to fuck four different groupies and two different dudes on separate occasions and one of them tells him that he knew it wasn't going to go down anyway because he could tell just by looking at him at the club that he was taken. "Whether you know it or not," the cute, obviously-queer kid says to him, laughing a little. "I'll bet you two are having a fight, aren't you? But you're in love, honey. You're taken."
Zacky has his pants off at that point, and he gestures to his sort-of erection, incredulous. "Yeah," the prettyboy tells him. "That belongs to someone else, I knew it right away. I was stupid for trying, you're just so hot." And then he touches Zacky's cheek and says "Call him or something, honey. You're dying, I can taste it in your mouth." And then he's gone.
+++
It's well past midnight when Zacky uses the key that Jon gave him a long time ago, slipping it into the keyhole as quietly as he can manage and tiptoes into Jon's apartment. The bed frame is still there, all of Zacky's shit packed back up into boxes with his name on them. It breaks his heart a little. Jon still packed up his shit. Histrionic and self-absorbed and wildly mood-swingy - he fucking packed up his shit for him.
Godfuckingdamnit. Fag McAss had known his shit, the other night.
But this time it's over for good, they've fought countless times before and 'broke up' on an even more regular basis than that. Their relationship had deteriorated into maybe three or four happy days of togetherness, followed by entire weeks of constant fighting and drama. He couldn't take it anymore, it was draining them both. Turning them into assholes. They were bad for each other. Hundreds of reasons for Zacky to turn the hell around and walk out of here.
It's really not necessary to list them all in his head though, when he pushes open the door to Jon's bedroom and finds him asleep in his bed (finally), snoring softly and moaning a little in his sleep. He's shirtless, in his fucking boxers with the ducks on them. He still smells like coffee, Zacky can pick it up on the air from here. He doesn't even realize he's standing over the bed until he is.
Jon sighs a little when he sits next to him and touches his face. He goes very still when he leans over and presses a kiss to his forehead, as if he recognizes the feel of those lip rings against his skin. Zacky pulls up the comforter, because Jon has goosebumps and he really should start sleeping in pajamas. And he's broken, this kid, his own bullshit and life and odds have cracked him right down the middle and really he's not doing shit to fix things but maybe he is or maybe he can't, maybe he needs help. Looking down at him, Zacky feels kind of stupid. Of course Jon needs help. Jon needs him. He needs Zacky more than Zacky needs him, and he really believes this until Jon sniffles a little in his sleep and rolls over, pressing instinctively against the warmth of his hip. He even kind of believes it then, but then Jon whimpers softly, moans something very quietly. And his hand gropes at the sheets next to Zacky, because even in his sleep he knows the difference between him and some random intruder in his bedroom.
Maybe the need is mutual, kind of.
What the fuck else would he be doing here?
Jon opens his eyes a little when Zacky gets up and heads for the dresser by the window. "Bottom drawer," he mumbles, his voice sleepy and needy. Zacky closes his eyes, because even though Jon had packed up his shit he'd kept some of his clothes.
So the need is pretty much definitely mutual, then.
It kind of sucks to need someone like Jon - an addict, a drama whore. But in the end not really, because Zacky's sure as hell flawed too, because he wasn't strong or smart enough to realize how bad he had it until the very moment Jon sniffled sleepily at him. And yeah, nail on head, Fag McAss: Zacky Baker is taken.
"Love you, baby." Jon's voice is so quiet that Zacky almost doesn't hear it when he slides into bed next to him, pulling him against his chest. But then he does, and he kisses Jon's forehead again.
"Need you," he says.
In the morning, they talk.
END
