All the Leaves are Brown (Zarry AU)

Chapter 4

By three things have calmed down somewhat. He’s playing a Bob Marley song, which seems fitting given the heavy cloud of smoke hanging over everyone’s heads. Usually the smell of weed makes him sleepy, but Zayn’s heart is hysterical as he looks across the living room at the kid. He’s not used to this. The best thing about blokes is that they don’t fuck about. There’s no idle flirting, no teasing texts. There is, of course, but most of the time – in Zayn’s experience, anyway – if a bloke likes you, he lets you know, whether that’s with a wink or a hand down the front of your jeans.

But this kid is all eyelashes and smiles and Zayn doesn’t know what to do. If he was interested he would have come over by now. That’s what Zayn would’ve done, what he did with Johnny at Discovery. It may have taken him a month to do it, but when he finally summoned the courage to ask him what song was playing, he knew that he was showing off when he compared it to Solomon Burke and he knew that he was flirting when he complimented Johnny on his lip ring. But it worked because it led to Zayn’s first kiss against a Smiths poster, Morrissey looking at him as if to say, Go on, my son.

The kid hasn’t gone near him all night, though, and that’s fine (Zayn’s used to the guys who bat their eyelashes and flirt, maybe even let him suck their dick, but run a mile when he asks them to return the favour) but it’s getting tiresome now. He used to enjoy torturing them. It wasn’t fair, he knows, but he loved how confounded by him they were. How confounded they were by it all, by how they always ended up in the corner of the pub with him, telling him their secrets, and the hugs that lingered a moment more than was comfortable. They’d look at Zayn like they were relying on him to explain it to them, as though they were lost in another country and he was the English-speaking stranger with the kind smile who’d make sure they’d find their way back to their hotel.

Explaining it usually involved a kiss and when they pulled away, another one that was firm enough to make them open their mouth. That’s the bit Zayn enjoyed most, more than the clumsy, eager hand jobs and the frantic shags, he liked feeling them give into it – to him – as he palmed the front of their jeans and breathed, ‘Show me.’ He’d smile when they covered his hand with theirs and panted his name into his mouth, but now it’s not so fun to have that I-honestly-don’t-know-what-came-over-me conversation that makes Zayn’s cheeks sting as he says, ‘Me.’ He can’t keep doing that, can’t keep watching someone walk out of a room when he walks in and pretend that he doesn’t care. So he gestures at Jas, to take over on the decks while he heads outside.

This is it, he thinks when he does, if the kid’s interested, he’ll follow. But he doesn’t and despite lingering on the patio long after he’s finished his cigarette, when he gives up and goes back inside, the kid is in the same spot. Now he’s surrounded by Doniya and her mates, who are fussing over his curls while they persuade him to do shots. He’s clearly loving it, his eyes bright and his mouth wet, but his mate isn’t so much. The guy looks petrified, his hand shaking as Doniya gives him a glass. He sniffs it then knocks it back and as soon as he does, he pulls a face as though someone’s come in his mouth without warning and Zayn can’t help but laugh as he walks towards the decks.