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Not That Different

Cheryl's POV -

I was completely exhausted by the time I could crawl into bed, but just tossed and turned for more than an hour because my brain wouldn't fall asleep.

I was afraid of the dream that I knew would come to me as soon as I closed my eyes.

After another hour, I decided to go sleep in one of the boys' room. However intruding it would be, I just couldn't sleep on my own.

Putting my slippers on, I walked out in the hallway. The hallway was drowned in a gloomy darkness,  with barely any moonlight shining through. I shivered. The hallway was perfectly friendly in the daytime, but at night, it seemed all sinister and evil.

I quickly hurried over to Liam's room, but stopped just as I put my hand on the door handle. No, I won't go to Liam tonight. I decided. He was already tired enough.

I heard some shuffling coming from Zayn's room, so I peeked my head inside, seeing Zayn pacing around while staring out of the window. He stopped abruptly when he heard me.

"What's up, Cheryl?" He asked me with concern.

"I couldn't go to sleep." I admitted.

"Neither could I."

"Can I sleep in your room tonight?" I asked hopefully. "Then at least we can both not go to sleep together. "

"Good idea," Zayn said, chuckling. "Come here."

I climbed onto his bed and he came after me, throwing the blankets over us.

"Can you tell me about yourself?" I asked, after a few moments of silence.

"I was born in Bradford." He started. "It's obvious that I have a Pakistani father, who married my mum Trisha. I have an older sister, Doniya, and two younger sisters, Waliyha and Safaa."

"Must be nice to have a big family." I commented.

"Yeah, it is." He replied, "I love my sisters so much. Just hearing their voices make me happy. Of course, you're my sister too now!"

"Yeah, but it still seems so unreal to me. At some times it feels like I've been living with you forever, but sometimes it feels like I'm just under a roof with five strangers. This still feels like a dream to me, you know. It's too good to be true."

"It's not. This is your new life now, and it will be like this for as long as we are alive."

Zayn wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a comforting hug. I leaned into it, more than content.

"What it's like, being famous?" I asked him.

"It's like an adventure," He replied, after a few seconds, "It's always exciting, but sometimes you get so overwhelmed by it that you just want it to stop. That feelings never last more than a day though. People are following you all the time, shouting at your face 24/7. You don't feel like yourself sometimes, just a celebrity with no story. You have to do everything that makes the fans happy,  or what the management says. You're not yourself anymore."

"I feel like that sometimes too, though in a different way. Back with my parents, or in the orphanage, I was just there. I did everything people told me to, never thinking about myself."

We both fell silent for a while, lost in thought.

"I guess, we aren't really that different. Are we, Cheryl?"

"I guess not." I said.

Slowly, I fell asleep, feeling abnormally peaceful. That night, I did woke up a few times when my dad wandered into my dreams, but he never came close enough to hurt me. Every time I woke up, I just stared at the ceiling, listening to Zayn's steady breathing which calmed me down.