x Ziam One Shots x

Follow you into the Dark

xx Credits to hardcoreziam on tumblr xx 

Zayn falls a 100% in love on a Saturday afternoon, right after sunset, his feet in wet sand, sitting near the shore, on the beach. 

He falls in love with Liam, his best friend, the adrenaline pulsing through his veins. 

He promises himself, right there and then, looking right into Liam’s eyes while the sun glows golden on them, that he won’t ever tell Liam about these feelings of his. He won’t ever destroy their friendship, he just won’t let Liam know. 

Because (1) he knows Liam will never fall in love with him because (2) with his part time jobs and three sisters at home and shaggy clothes he really isn’t good enough or even remotely comparable to Liam. (3) Liam was well off, surgeon mom and tycoon dad, so yeah Liam was rich and he was (4) Zayn’s best friend and (5) only his best friend and (6) his only best friend thus (7) Zayn really isn’t foolish enough to lose Liam’s friendship over… idiotic feelings. 

And also, (8), he really doesn’t want to hurt Liam. Or gross him out. Or change anything really. 

The thing is, Zayn doesn’t really know what to expect of Liam. He doesn’t know how he will take things, how will he act towards Zayn after. He isn’t even in a position to guess right now. Thus, he will just never let Liam know about what’s in his heart, he doesn’t know how Liam will react. And to be honest, if their friendship is at stake, he doesn’t even want to find out. 

He’d rather be just friends with Liam than lose him completely. 

The thing about Liam is; he is a million shades of the same guy. Even when Zayn has known Liam sincesixth grade, he’s sure there are about a hundred and ninety seven things he doesn’t know about Liam. 

For one, he doesn’t know why Liam can change color in a second. He’s just so… unpredictable. He will be all uptight and secretive one time, and so open and carefree the next. He will just lose it over mere trifles, but won’t say a word when the world’s falling apart right in front of his eyes. He will be angry when Zayn tries to get him to open up a little and he will be the one telling Zayn about how his mother didn’t let him touch the cookie jar when he was five and he fell down off a high stool really hard while he was trying to reach it and since then he’s afraid of heights and how he’s embarrassed because of it. 

Maybe, it’s because of these little secrets and unintentional acts of innocent affection that Zayn is this vulnerable when it comes to dealing with Liam. Zayn hasn’t known love. Sure, Doniya loves him. She’s supposed to, she’s his elder sister and also his, well, mother, since she’s been playing that role since they had lost their parents in a plane crash (he doesn’t remember anything of that though, except watching fire, smoke and disaster on television and a lot of crying after that) (even when he was eleven years old when he lost them, he remembers none of it) (and he doesn’t want to because when he thinks about his mother’s eyes and how his are exactly alike, he cries) (how his father had an amazing laugh and he inherited that too, he cries) (he doesn’t like to cry). And sure, Waliyah and Safaa love him too. But well, those are his sisters too. So thats the same thing. He hadn’t made any real friends back at his previous school (thanks to his brown skin and eastern looks) (he doesn’t like to think about that either), but after his parent’s death when he had to shift school because now his eldest sister had to work and even with two jobs she couldn’t afford the fees, he had finally made a friend; Liam. 

Now, he finally had someone to sit with him at lunch, take walks with him in the park, talk about comics with, choose to be with on a class project. It’s not like this was love. But to him, it was new. And having someone not eat until you joined them, or having someone make you show your secret batman drawings to, or having them praise your artwork which you think is not that great, or having someone laugh at your jokes, or having them standing below with their arms open wide promising to catch you when you jump off a tree… well, it sure felt like being loved.