Suber: The Uber of Sex (Queer Erotica Short Stories)

Part 37: Zig & Viktor Revisited

Zig was about to knock, but then remembered. Viktor had given them a key. Smiling just a bit, they slid their key into the lock and went inside.

Zig looked up the staircase and called up. "Viktor?"

No answer.

It only took a moment to see that he wasn't anywhere else in the house. Zig called his name again in the kitchen.

"Out here," came the response from the back door, leading to the garage.

Zig went through the door, down the concrete stairs and to the garage. It was a large, surprisingly well-organized space, with tools carefully placed on racks and pegboard, except for the wrenches and toolbox splayed on an oil-stained blanket near a rusted Camry. Viktor's dirty jeans stuck out from underneath the vehicle.

"Whatchu doing?" Zig asked and looked a bit closer. "Is that your neighbor's car?"

"Yeah, the transmission fluid's leaking. There's a crack in the pan, but I think there might be something else, too." His boots shuffled on the concrete floor, scooting out from under the sedan. With perhaps a millimeter of clearance over his muscular chest, he emerged, his black shirt glistening with spots of fresh liquid. The ragged, oil-stained bathroom towel under his back bunched as he slid back into view. His eyes met Zig's and that familiar, crooked smile slanted over his face. He stood up, his large, wide-shouldered frame looming over Zig by several inches.

He started to pull them into a hug, then pulled back. "Oh, sorry." He gestured to his shirt. "Transmission fluid."

Zig chuckled. Breathing in the acrid garage smells of oil, sweat, transmission fluid, wood and metal, Zig stole their hands under his shirt and pulled it over his head. With their hands on his chest, then circling around his back, they pulled him close and kissed him deeply.

As Zig's tongue met Viktor's, lips intertwining, Zig's hands felt across the topographic scars mapped across his back. Zig traced over long, deep, year-long whip scars and short and narrow, cat-o-nine-tail scratches given days ago. Their fingernails fell into the familiar paths they had forged through Viktor's skin, going backwards up his lower back, across the rises of the muscles in the middle of his back, up to his shoulders—and stopped. There were new scratches in his skin, at the shoulders, from fingernails that weren't Zig's. Zig knew it innately, by memory, like they knew the feel of Viktor's body.

Zig pulled back. "What's this? Who did this?" They hadn't meant to say it so plainly, but the words came tumbling out.

"Huh?" Viktor leaned back a bit. "What?"

Zig brushed their hands past the narrow—alien—scratches. "These."

A moment of surprise splashed across Viktor's face and Zig read him immediately—he'd been dreading this moment. The surprise transformed into trepidation. Standing so close, Zig felt the tense breath Viktor pulled into his chest.

"Who did this?" Zig said again, their voice getting sharp.

"Uh..." Viktor hesitated, his gaze retreating. "Let's talk inside. Let me get cleaned up."

Zig's heartbeat jumped into their throat. Viktor's tone dropped into sudden seriousness. Zig knew where that led, or where it had led in the past; This isn't what I thought it was. I'm not ready for a relationship. This is too weird for me. All statements that said the same thing—you're a freak.

"Um. Oh-kay." Zig took a deep breath, struggling to push their thundering heart back down into their chest. They followed Viktor back into the house.

He went upstairs to change his clothes and Zig waited in the living room. They looked up at the many small, framed drawing and paintings of monsters that covered the living room wall. It reminded Zig of the first time they'd met Viktor. With their heart pounding, that first time they'd had a vaporous fear that Viktor was going to murder them. This time, the heart-pounding fear was not deadly, though it didn't feel like it; someone they loved was about to claw out their heart, again.