A/N: I have been typing this one shot for like 3 days and finally am done hope its good its really long it was 20 pages on Microsoft word anyway hope you like it vote if you do please. :)
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When Zayn first met Niall, he was all laughter and energy and he was impossible to put up with really. There was something about the way that he was always bouncing off the walls around them that drove Zayn absolutely insane and made him want to capture the boy and sit him down and force him to stay still for at least one second so that someone could say something without sending him into a fit of giggles that collided with absolutely everything in the room.
The annoyance only lasted about a day before Niall became the perfect distraction from Liam’s seriousness and Louis’ crazyness and Harry’s mooneyes that never seemed to leave Louis. It was adorable – if not a little sickening – and Zayn often found that when his eyes did stray towards Louis and Harry, he felt like he was intruding on some sort of personal moment that no one else was invited to understand. And so Niall was his relief.
He was always giggling and it was infectious, coaxing a bubble of laughter out of Zayn’s lips at the way that he would clutch at his stomach and lean forwards with the force of his amusement. By that time, all Zayn wanted to do was capture him and sit him down in one place so that Zayn could watch him all day. Niall was the sun and Zayn could barely look away.
-
He realised he probably had the beginnings of feelings for the blonde before they’d even made it through the judges’ houses. It was when they were packing their bags after their audition in front of Simon and Liam left the room to shower, leaving Niall and Zayn alone. Niall was babbling away in his adorable accent and Zayn realised that if they didn’t make it through, it would make seeing Niall almost impossible and he didn’t think he could deal with that – with losing him before he’d ever really had him.
Zayn felt something akin to panic bubbling under his skin and his fingers shook a little where he had been folding a t-shirt into his bag. He took a deep breath and tried to smoothen his movements, the air rattling in his lungs.
Niall probably picked up on Zayn’s worry because he looked at him and stopped babbling. “You really want t’ get through, don’t ya?” he asked suddenly and Zayn let his lips fold softly into a tight smile, nodding for different reasons than those that Niall suspected.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I really do.”
-
In between the judges’ houses and the actual X Factor House, Zayn didn’t hear from Niall all that much. Sure, in the month that split the two stages of the competition, they didn’t lose contact completely. But it was enough that Zayn thought that he had probably only been so infatuated with Niall because everything had been so new and exciting. He lost himself in time with his friends in Bradford, spending as much time with them as possible before he had to leave.
He almost thought he fell in love with a girl Maddy, but that’s what the person who takes your virginity does to you really, isn’t it? Liam managed to convince him that his heart wasn’t broken when he came up to visit Zayn for a surprise and he found out that the girl he’d just lost it to was already sleeping with someone else.
“It’s not really the sound of your heart breaking though Zayn,” he said. “It’s just the sound of your dignity slowly but surely crumbling away.”
Zayn had laughed and smacked Liam right in the chest, causing him to let out an “oof” of air and sprawl back against the couch they were sharing with a grin.
