Alcatraz

Bonus: Full Chapter 4

Okay, so sitting in the bushes outside Niall's house was decidedly not stalker-ish in the slightest. After all, they were friends—lovers, maybe.

All right, so it was a bit creepy. Not that Zayn gave a single flying fuck. He'd waited way too long to see his blonde beauty to be ashamed at the possibility of being caught peeping.

Hamilton had decided to let Zayn do the "extraction" himself. It would be too risky to have both men trying to sneak into the second-story apartment Niall resided in. Instead, Hamilton would act as the simultaneous lookout and the get-away driver. Quite funny really, how the former warden of Alcatraz was more or less resorting to a life of crime. Not that they were necessarily stealing anything. Well, unless you count Niall's heart. Then yes, Zayn definitely planned on stealing the whole thing.

Zayn had been lying in wait for over an hour now. It was well on its way to half past one and Zayn was beginning to get quite uncomfortable between the literal stick in his arse and the whole "lying on the ground" thing. He wasn't sure how he'd ever managed to survive in prison on those shitty beds. This was absolute torture.

From how goody-two-shoes perfect Niall had made Liam out to be, Zayn had assumed his bedtime schedule would be on par with an old granny snuggling in with her cats for the night, but he'd been pacing back and forth in front of the bay window for almost an hour now.

Zayn half wondered what he was thinking, but on the other hand, he was sure it wasn't anything good.

So in the meantime, he was stuck hiding in the bushes, painfully close to Niall, who was clueless that his love was mere metres away from him.

*****

"Finally!" Zayn hissed to himself. The light had gone off in the main room, and none too soon. Zayn's bum was asleep, the cringe-worthy pins-and-needles feeling making him want to laugh and cry simultaneously.

Now, for the hard part. It hadn't been too difficult to figure out which bedroom was Niall's. Turns out, he had a bad habit of changing in front of the windows. Zayn really needed to scold him for that. But what Zayn still hadn't figured out was how exactly he was going to get into the apartment without being seen or heard.

Unfortunately for Zayn, those cheesy movies about forbidden love and sneaky teens were very misleading. I mean, who has a freaking trellis conveniently leading to their bedroom window? Apparently not Niall. Or probably anyone for that matter.

Goddammit.

Zayn knew he probably should have scoped the place out before just showing up and expecting some miracle to happen. But that would have cost Zayn another day that he could be spending with Niall, and he just wasn't willing to make that sacrifice. If prison had taught him anything, it's that time is the most important currency, and no matter how hard you work, you can't buy more.

So here Zayn was, looking up at the window with slat blinds, hands laced on top of his head in contemplation. He was sure he looked like a goddamn creep, but luckily, there was no one around to call the police.