Kick, Push

Competition Day: +16

As a kid, you dream about a lot of crazy things. Aspiring to go to space, racing around a track at supersonic speeds, being fearless enough to climb the tallest tree in the neighborhood. For Zayn, it was wanting to be a Power Ranger. The black one, to be specific. After that, he'd probably chose to win Gold at the X Games.

Ever since he was able to balance on one foot, he can remember being glued to a skateboard. At age four he did his first proper kick flip, age ten broke his first bone from attempting to clear a backside 360 nose grab over a stair rail, but it wasn't until he was sixteen that Zayn managed to secure the coveted X Games Gold medal.

What was once a childhood dream became a reality achieved, in, as some would argue, still childhood. Only a small portion of the population could say that they've accomplished their life goal. An even smaller amount could say that they'd done so before they could even order a pint. As much as the enormity of it excited Zayn and those around him at the time, it also made him wonder: now what? How does it get any bigger than this?

Clearing customs and walking out to cameras galore, he thinks he's finally got his answer.

Tokyo Olympics 2020.

At age twenty seven, he's used to the press and attention, but it helps to feel Louis' arm sling around his shoulders and bring him close. The flashes go off from every press outlet around the world trying to catch a glimpse at two more elite athletes arriving for The Games.

It's a moment of pure friendship, one that Zayn treasures more than he thinks Louis understands; a simple gesture to ease his nerves.

When you've been under a microscope by an entire industry since you were a pre-teen, it only makes sense that anxiety creeps in from the pressure of it all. Before his first X Games win, Zayn's uneasiness came from not wanting to make any mistakes that would jeopardize his prospering career as a pro skater. After the victory, it came from needing to keep up the new expectations of being number one. With twenty various titles and consistently staying in the top five world rankings since he went pro at fifteen, Zayn thinks he's done a pretty good job at maintaining the hype behind him, but it's the inner pressure that he puts on himself that has always been the worst demon of them all. Recently however, his brain's betrayed him in a wonderfully new manner: instilling copious amounts of fear about how he'll react to failure, not exactly the failure itself. It's an unconventional thought, or so Google's told him, so he hopes that his traditional techniques to banish the anxiety away when it shows up around competition season, will pull through. Now that he's in Japan, Zayn will just be happy with himself if he makes it back to the airport without having experienced any sort of existential anxiety attack, medal or not.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Niall filming the whole experience - another thing that he's gotten used to since his best friend took on the job of his personal platform manager and videographer when social media started to gain traction. Zayn knows he's not supposed to always look directly at the lens, but he can't help it. It's much easier to grin at Niall's 5D Mark II than to smile down the barrels of cameras that will have his and Louis' picture sent out to Getty Images in a matter of minutes; the likes of The Boardr and Thrasher adding headlines to the shots akin to 'Team GB's Street and Park Skater touchdown in Tokyo!' or 'Boy Wonder Zayn Malik One Step Closer to Solidifying Gold and Making Skateboarding History'.

He hardly slept on the flight over from London, the first class ride not doing anything to ease his growing anguish. Staring out the window of the private car stuck in Tokyo traffic, Zayn's brought out of his thoughts as an impassioned Niall shoves a camera in his and Louis' face for them to look at the footage he captured. Somehow the Irishman's DSLR has managed to make Zayn look presentable in his black jeans and red and blue Team Great Britain zip up; not at all like he had only gotten an hour of sleep on the thirteen hour flight. He rolls his eyes when he hears Louis ask Niall if he can steal some of the footage for his own Instagram.