All the Leaves are Brown (Zarry AU)

Chapter 2

Zayn’s not staring at him, except he is. Mercifully the living room is fuller now and it’s just dark enough in there that he hopes it isn’t too obvious. Not that the kid notices as he and his mate settle into a corner. But maybe he does, because when he leans against the wall he cocks his hip. It’s no accident, Zayn’s sure, because it makes his t-shirt ride up enough to show Zayn just how low his jeans are slung on his hips, and when the kid lifts his eyelashes to look at him, Zayn knows it definitely wasn’t an accident.

He has to look away then as he realises that if he hooked a finger into one of the kid’s belt loops and tugged, they’d probably fall right down. The thought makes the hair on his arms bristle as he kneels down to the box of records at his feet to find the Shide Boss song he knows will get Doniya and her mates on the coffee table. He waits a second before he stands up again because it’s been a while since he’s felt that, whatever it is that’s making his hands shake as he takes the record out of the sleeve and puts it on the turntable. He catches himself tugging on the tuft of hair under his bottom lip with his finger and thumb as he does and stops himself because that’s his tell, Ant says.

When Zayn likes someone he plays with his beard.

Ant first noticed it one drizzly Saturday afternoon while they were plundering the used section at that record shop back home. ‘Here we go again,’ Ant said with a theatrical sigh, much to Zayn’s bemusement. He thought he was referring to the Chic LP he was considering (Zayn’s weakness for disco something his friend still hasn’t made his peace with) but when he realised that Ant was referring to his goatee, Zayn stopped. He was only fifteen so goatee is generous, but it was just thick enough to remind him that he wasn’t a kid anymore and when he realised he was tugging it and gazing longingly at the guy behind the counter, that reminded him that he wasn’t a kid anymore, either.

His name was Johnny. Zayn could laugh about it now. The record shop was called Discovery of all things, which, with hindsight, is pretty apt given it’s not just the first place he heard Gil Scott Heron, but also the first place he discovered how much he enjoys being fingered. So he digs out the Chic LP, closing his eyes and inhaling the smell of it – old paper and cigarette ash and something else that will forever remind him of heaving his record box off the 634 bus on a Saturday night – as he wonders what happened to that kid, the one with the patchy goatee who bought almost every record in Discovery before he summoned the courage to ask Johnny what song was playing. Maybe that’s what the kid is doing, Zayn thinks as he sneaks another look at him before turning back to his mate. Maybe he hopes the can of Red Stripe he’s drinking at last will give him the fortitude to come over and tell him to play an Arctic Monkeys track.

Zayn can wait.