Heartstrings ➳ z.m.

thirteen - zayn

Chapter Thirteen – Zayn

            Zayn Malik does not talk, but if he did and you were to ask him if he’s embarrassed, he would tell you no.

            Zayn’s more than embarrassed, and because of that, he stares at the ground until they finally leave the amusement park many hours, rides, and bags of crisps later.

            “You’re not… Retreating back into that shell of yours, are you?” Skylar asks him once they reach the van, and he looks up, giving a slight shake of his head.

            He’s been thinking a lot over the past four days. About everything, really. The boys, Skylar, SkylarandLouis, SkylarandZayn—which he preferred, though it was quite biased—, but most of all he thought about himself. What he’s like now, what he was like then.

            And he realized that he didn’t want this anymore; caging himself like an animal.

            He wants to truly be Zayn, the one that loved to laugh, the one that definitely hated to dance—which he still does now, honestly—the one that loved to talk as much as he loved to listen.

            It almost brought him to tears last night, thinking of how much he had truly changed. It was so cruelly ironic that he had to laugh at himself, even as the bitter tears clumped his lashes and blurred his vision. Change; the one thing that Zayn had tried to avoid the most, the one reason why he was the way he was now, it was the sole thing that he had done to himself.

            He had changed himself to such an unrecognizable creature that he wonders how he had lasted this long without being thrown into an insane asylum.

            Zayn used to pity people like this—people trapped in their own minds, and thoughts, and stuck so far deep that it was too hard to even try to see past the dappled guarded wall that was placed before their vision. He used to wonder what it would be like, if he’d be happier that way. 

            He never imagined that he’d be one of ‘those people’; the outcasts, the ‘freaks’. He had always thought that right now he’d be in Uni, maybe with a pretty little girlfriend on his arm, or maybe even two—Zayn hadn’t been particularly known for loyalty back then, what could he say? He was fourteen for Christ’s sake—but he never planned this.

            He never imagined that night, that godforsaken night where he had no business being anywhere but his own bed. He knew that he shouldn’t have gone in the first place, and he should’ve known when he first got there that he should go home, but he didn’t, and he stayed, and because of him she’s dead.

            Dead. There had been so much blood that night, and Zayn could barely stand it.

            “Zayn!”

            Zayn blinks toward the voice, toward Skylar who’s standing in front of him, wiping the teardrops from his cheeks that he didn’t even realize were falling.

            “What’s going on?” she murmurs, and he almost wants to whimper when she throws her arms around him, pulling him close until his lashes are painting the canvas of her skin with tears.

            Instead he sighs, breathing in the scent that is a little bit cotton candy and a whole lot Skylar, trying to get his tears to slow, but they just won’t.

            “I wish I knew what was going on in your head,” she tells him, but she doesn’t mean it.

            She can’t mean it. Zayn wants to scream at her, he wants to yell and tell her to take that back, because she doesn’t and she never truly will want to know what goes in his head.

            How he wishes that day never happened, how the day replays like an endless loop around his mind, how he wishes that he could stop thinking altogether, how his mind and heart, no matter what, always seem to whisper SkylarSkylarSkylar.

            How he wants to pull her impossibly closer.

            How he wants to push her against a wall and kissher shamelessly, making him forget everything that’s ever happened to him. Making him forget his own name. Until everything is SkylarandZaynandSkylarandZaynandSkylar and there’s no room for any breath, just their bruised lips melting against each other’s, the sound of their hearts beating in unison.

How he wants to have her beneath him, and so close that he can feel her everything, and touch her everything, and be her everything.

How he wants to love her.

How he wants her to love him.

No. She doesn’t want to know this, any of this.

“Zayn?”

He looks up, meets those alluring crystal eyes that are so filled with concern.

“Are you okay now? Can we get in the van?”

He nods, not because he’s okay, because he’ll never be okay, not until she’s his and he’s hers and all that’s in between. No, he’s nodding because he wants to get in the van, and hadn’t even realized that they were the only two out of it.

Skylar slips her arms from his waist to his hand, and she squeezes it gently while Zayn just tries not to focus on how her fingers seem to fit perfectly between his, and how her hand is so warm and soft.

He’s done with the plan of not letting her get close. It didn’t work, and she’s etched herself deep into his heart now.

He sighs as they enter the van, crawling into the only vacant seats in the back. Harry and Louis say nothing about their first time witnessing Zayn cry, and why Skylar consoled him as if she had already done so many times before, but he can feel the questions swimming in their gazes.

He doesn’t say anything as Skylar leans into him, plugging one of her earphones into his ear.

He closes his eyes and rests his cheek against the cool window.

About twenty minutes later, Zayn can hear as the guys begin to speak—Harry, Louis, Stan, and Jake. The earphone had fallen out long ago, but Zayn didn’t dare reach for it again, because Skylar was nestled in his side, dead to the world, and he didn’t want to wake her.

He was pretty sure that the others thought that he was asleep as well, and so he kept his eyes closed, eavesdropping.

 “Oh, but Jake, you have to think that they’re a fine couple, don’t you? Don’t you think they’re cute?”

“I don’t think they’re anything,” that’s Louis now, and Zayn almost wants to smile from the animosity in his voice.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Harry snorts, “and you only say that because you fancy her. What do you think, Jake?”

“I think,” the guard hesitates. “I think that she’s good for him. Really good for him.”

Except all Zayn can think and hear and feel and smell is Skylar and Zayn’s not quite sure how good she really is if she’s killing him.

He opens his eyes, not a lot, not enough for Harry or any of the others to notice, but just enough to look at the small brunette sprawled out on his chest. He smiles the tiniest of smiles, and there his heart goes again.

SkylarSkylarSkylar.

And he decides he kind of likes it.

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Little hints as to what happened that night, and so. much. zylar. It killed me writing this chapter, umf