This is something I wrote a long time ago. I kept it around in case it ever became part of a story, but I think I'm just going to put it out there for now, seeing as it may actually go along with Zig's storyline this season. It's just another nanofic, like the last one I uploaded. I really love this character. Thanks for any reviews, favorites, follows, or just reads. If you're interested, tumblr link is on my profile page.
.
.
.
These days, Tiny's jokes are all like his drags: slow, dull, and only funny when they're getting stoned. He and Zig are slumped over on the fire escape of some cleared-out apartment, watching and laughing at people on the streets below them. Their legs dangle limply off the side of the platform, all of the chipped-into-place muscles wilted out of them. And they're getting high, of course—the kind of high that, as it turns out, can happen all out in the open like this; the one that makes you feel like this is your life up here, and those are their lives down there, and maybe it's true that some worlds just don't touch.
Zig told Maya he was done with the drugs, but the truth is, it didn't feel much like a lie when he said it. Even now, it doesn't feel like one. When he's with the Matlins, guessing Wheel of Fortune letter-boxes or seeing his face in the top corner of the screen when they Skype Katie, he is clean. It's only when he leaves them—when he steps out of one world and into the other—that he's stoned again. And when he's in one life, the other seems blurry, as if he can't possibly be accountable for the promises he made in it.
Still, he's taken to seeking out abandoned places like this one, sometimes with Tiny and sometimes on his own. They're just apartments with cushion-less sofas and houses with old cupboards that have emptied out to make tunnels. Right now, Tiny crashes with some stoner from a local community college, and Zig is still staying with the Matlins, but the unspoken truth about the whole thing is that they aren't going to these places just to smoke or to play at adventures or even to stop thinking. They're going to these places so that, if the night ever comes when the glass between the two worlds splinters—when the gang is scouring the city like rats looking for prey, rather than an escape, in this dark maze—they'll have their own kind of Underground Railroad. Zig tries not to think of how it merely scatters itself in circles, only concerned with keeping you hidden, never moving you towards anything better.
"So, are you fucking her yet?"
Zig snaps his head up. "Who?"
If not for the way he's angling his head and shoulders, Zig wouldn't even be able to find the smirk in Tiny's infinite black eyes. "Oh, c'mon. The Barbie."
Zig scowls. "You don't fuck Maya, shithead."
A laugh trickles out after the smoke. "Sorry," Tiny coughs, "I forgot that that's frowned upon among the saints. Are you screwing her yet?"
But by then, the drugs are kicking in, and Zig laughs.