Drown [z.m.]

26.

This isn't a love story. Zayn never wanted it to be a love story; sitting together on love seats and sharing strawberry ice cream out of the same tub, or driving together to pubs at two in the morning and drinking the lightest beer they could find, or murmuring wishes in the dark hoping someone would catch them and make them come true.

But it's not. It's not a love story. It's a tragedy. It's endings and nevers and no light at the end of the tunnel.

He walks slowly, precariously to Clementine's house in his worn sneakers. His left shoelace is coming undone, and he kicks pebbles in his path because Zayn feels like he's enclosed within four walls, and every breath he takes brings them closer and closer together until he's trapped, can't breathe, can't move, can't see, can't-

He closes his eyes and pauses, listening to the hammering of the rain against the concrete, sending up wisps of mist that are almost ethereal. He almost wants to lie down amongst the wet ground and fallen leaves and stay there until someone finds him, but he's got a bouquet clenched in his hands and thorns tearing into his palm.

He has a purpose right now and he has to fulfill it.

The boy with roses in his hand and blood on his palm and rainwater trickling down his bare arms walks up to the door.

Inside is a girl with hair like hellfire and paint stained hands after drawing portraits of a boy she can never have and rainwater slamming against her window.

Zayn breathes in and raises his knuckles to the door to knock. He doesn't. He drops his hand, clenches his fists, tells himself to 'man the fuck up and do something right.' But he can't. His apologies are like chains and they tie him down to the doorstep so all he can do is stare and stare and stare at the wooden door, immobile.

Clementine peers from her window and she can see him there, drenched, with roses a bright red that's almost defiant in the dark night. She almost wills him forward. It's like the sky is at her fingertips and she whispers to herself, 'Do it, Zayn. Say you're sorry.' Because then the stars won't be so hollow anymore and she can see them, crossing a bridge, the sun sinking far behind.

He can't.

Raindrops are so similar to tears.

He's crying and crying at her doorstep, and a ghost of a boy he used to be would step out and hammer the door and yell her name to the galaxies and clouds and exoplanets.

He's so far gone now. He drops the roses and races away without a single 'sorry' or 'I love you' and the rain races him far, far away where he will throw himself facedown in his bed and punch the pillows, pretending they're all him. He'll stain the bedsheets with his tears and yells.

Nobody will hear him.

Clem will step out as soon as he's gone and pick up the wet roses from the doorsteps and sniff their sharp scent, telling herself it's okay when it's really not.
She'll shut the door and lean against it and take deep, heaving breaths because he's so far gone now.

-

One cold morning in autumn, Zayn Malik laughed underwater and sent up a stream of bubbles. He hates roses. He hates how they smell and how they feel and how the petals remind him of a girl he loved and how that was gone now. He laughed again and again until the water shushed him like he was a baby, cradling him until his body floated to the surface and she found him like it was meant to happen.