Work Text:
He swears he’s seeing the music. Like, literally seeing the sound waves rise and fall, tremble as the bass shakes his entirety like he’s weak at his foundation – and it feels like it, after everything that’s happened. Zayn’s eyelids won’t stay open for the life of him, like the thick smoke in the room is holding them down, pulling his shoulders and knees and feet and hands down with it. It’s trapped him, chained him, to the leather couch, holding him victim to the sound waves sinking its way into his skin, shaking every bone in his body.
Zayn knew it was a bad idea before he even did it. A bad, bad, terrible fucking idea to take those three, four, five shots and back them after getting so high he barely knows his own name, keeps forgetting where he is until Shahid reminds him with a hand to his knee, knocking his soul back inside himself. He doesn’t even feel human anymore. He hasn’t felt human in years.
He’d seen it in Harry before he saw it in himself: the tired, slow drag of his eyes, chapped lips pulled into a downward-sloping curve before his hands came up and rubbed it all away, as if erasing what was once etched in sand. So easy, like the sweeping of feet until the beach is a blank slate again, ready for the next person to come by and leave their mark, both permanent and temporary. Rubbing, rubbing, and then he’s smiling again, Lou’s peachy concealer hiding the two hours of sleep he’d barely savored before being tossed back into the spotlight. He’s ready to be scrutinized and chopped, a pig up for slaughter. But not yet squealing.
How many times can he be broken in? Five years too many times. He’d been shoving his feet into shoes two sizes too small for so long that he’d forgotten what it felt like to fit. He’s forgotten, even now, how much relief it is to wear his own size, keeps thinking to could’ve, should’ve, maybe. Could’ve held it in for a few more years, probably, since he’s already seen the worst, the five years’ worth of being crammed into tight, cramped places. Should’ve held it in for a few more years, because he’s seen the worst, knew, more or less, he could withstand it, and – and, fuck. Liam always fell backwards because he knew Zayn would be there to catch him. And Niall? Niall needs someone who makes sense sometimes; someone who keeps it together no matter what, because he has (had? Fuck, oh god, had). Harry and he were the same, in a lot of the ways that made them different. Harry felt it first, but he has sand for a face, can wash it all away with the tides of his hands, make himself born again.
Zayn felt it second, never stopped feeling that fucking ache where his heart once beat. The tired, slow drag of his eyes, chapped lips pulled into a down-sloping curve, grey bags hidden by concealer, not eating, not eating, not eating. It didn’t sweep away like the tide eating up sand; it followed him in the spotlight, on the stage, in the papers. It felt like weakness, still feels like weakness, even if he dealt with paki/isis recruit/womanizer the same way the others dealt with ugly/stupid/untalented. The juiciest pig goes to the slaughter first, squeals until it’s neck is sliced clean.
After all, Louis agrees. “You’re weak,” he’d said, as Zayn hurriedly packed his things, quietly sobbing, the jet waiting to take him home. “Have you always been so fucking pathetic?”
“It’s not like that,” Zayn remembers saying, still shoving tee shirts and joggers and anything he could find on the hotel room floor so that he could do anything, everything but look into Louis’ cold, hard face. If Harry’s sand, Louis is cement; one dried, only a jackhammer can pierce it. “You know it’s not like that.”
“Oh, get off it,” Louis answered, so fast Zayn wondered if he had even processed his response. “You’ve always fucking done this, ran away when things got hard, and I always let it happen, because we were close. We were the fucking best, together.” Were. It hurt so bad, Zayn had to stop to look at him, stunned into silence. “But now? You’re fucking worse than Troy.”
He knew that’d cut deep, knew it’d hit Zayn where it burns the most, like straight vodka that stays right in your esophagus. The one who abandoned him. The one who never cared about him until his success was everywhere you’d look, and Troy just couldn’t resist trying to get a piece of the pie. The person who’d destroyed Louis for so many years – and Louis’d compared Zayn to him.
“That’s not fair,” Zayn all but shouted, voice cracking dangerously. “You’ll never fucking understand what it’s like. You’ll never understand how much it hurts when your own fans, the very people who’re supposed to support you, tell you you’re worthless because you’re Muslim. Try having people send you messages every fucking day for five years that you’re the reason 9/11 happened, you’re the reason Muslims are ‘taking over’, you’re the reason their cousin or friend or grandparent died. Try it, you fucking dick.”
The one person who would drop everything to hold him, tell him everything’s okay because he knows Zayn, knows him, just stood there and kept his face stone-cold. Cement only breaks under a jackhammer. “Funny,” came his unusually calm response, venom bubbling just beneath the surface. “calling me a dick when all you’ve done the past few years is pretend you cared about the band, about us, about Perrie. All you’ve successfully done lately is stick that filthy, used up cock of yours in anything that wasn’t her twat.”
“Nice,” was all Zayn could say. It was literally all Zayn could say. His chest was heaving, his hands shaking in it, vision going blurry until all Louis was was a blur of brown, greys, black. He felt a proper anxiety attack coming on in waves, and it felt like the ocean was between his ears, white noise amidst the sound of his heavy breathing.
“Go ahead,” Louis continued, as if he hadn’t ripped Zayn’s heart far enough out as it is. “run away like always.” He turned away to leave, but just before reaching the hotel door, he turned back to Zayn, expression suddenly soft. “I think the band is gonna be better now, without you.”
Then he was gone. It feels like fucking yesterday, albeit it’s been almost a month since that day. He’d spent his whole time back at home sobbing, barfing his guts up in the middle of the night, wishing that he never existed. Louis still won’t answer his texts, his phone calls, still tweets about band-related activities as if Zayn was never even in One Direction. Harry’s replies are short and sweet, Zayn’s lucky to get Niall to reply to him within three days, and sometimes Liam calls, but he always sounds distant, distracted by anything that isn’t the sound of Zayn’s pleading voice. They’ve all, somewhere along the short expanse of a month, stopped believing in him.
I'd also like to take this moment to thank four of the best guys I've ever met. Everything I've done with them will stay with me for the rest of my life.
So. He’s drunk and high and swears he’s seeing, like, music. Some obscure rap song is playing in the studio, written by some up and coming artist that Shahid’s collaborating with, and Zayn can see the sound waves moving up and down around him, sinking into his skin, making him tremble in it. He wants to reach out and touch it, feel it between his thumb and index fingers to figure out its texture, but his hands are too busy being held down by the thick smell of weed in the studio.
“Great, innit?” Shahid’s saying, reaching over to squeeze the space just above Zayn’s knee. “Shit makes you really think.”
“Yeah,” Zayn says, with all of his remaining strength. “Makes you fuckin’ think.”
He thinks he’s gonna pass out now, is truly ready to have his brain and body just shut off so he doesn’t feel like he’s walking down a tunnel with the sound of the ocean echoing from the right, Shahid’s voice and the rap music from the left, but it never comes, just teases him with the possibility of it. He parts his lips to finally, like, come clean about how both scary and welcoming this feeling is, but instead of words a breathless gasp greets him instead, just as a wet mouth connects with his neck. He forgets what he wants to say almost as immediately as it came to his brain.
Nothing’s working like it should. The hand just above his right knee slides up his joggers, in between his thighs, and gropes him right where the aftermath of the mouth to his neck touches. Behind his tightly shut eyelids, Zayn sees Harry rubbing at his face, in that backstage room full of cologne and racks of clothes and perfectly-lined up makeup. He’s rubbing and rubbing, pulling his skin this way and that, before he reveals an easy smile, bright, eager green eyes, the rotten skin behind them swallowed up in his irises.
“Shahid,” Zayn gasps, then quiets. He’s proper touching his filthy, used up cock now, jerking him slowly, sensually, R&B playing in the very distance.
“Yeah,” Shahid says, right against his ear, “I know, I know,” even when he doesn’t know. He’ll never know, the same Louis will never know, never even tried to know. Oh my fucking god. Oh my fucking god.
Shahid splits Zayn open, dissembles him, works his way into him with careful, heavy snaps of his hips -- shows him that all his pieces are put together wrong.
Zayn hasn’t been put together correctly in years. Harry knew it first.
*
Maybe it’s because Louis is his first man? Because Zayn trusted him first, before anybody else, to control him the way he never let anyone else do before? Zayn thought he never knew, like, true, proper love before Perrie came along – but then Louis worked his way into that empty slot in his heart he never knew existed until he did.
It started with his featherlike touches, just enough to announce to Zayn that he was there, available, ready change his whole world with just a chaste kiss and a soft whisper of a, “I wish I knew you.”
“Knew me?” Zayn had asked, hoarse with sleep and want. The bunk bed was too small for the two of them, they knew, but they folded their gangly limbs together, made it work like they always did.
“Knew you before,” Louis continued. His eyes were a dark, stormy blue, rain on a beach, as he looked between Zayn’s own caramel gaze. “before all this shit knew me.”
Zayn carded a hand through Louis’ messy hair, pressing his palm to Louis’ jaw and feeling his heartbeat pulse there. “I know you now,” he said simply. “so that’s what matters.”
The way Louis rolled his hips always made Zayn cry. Since the beginning Louis knew how to cut him deep, how to reassemble him, to free his feet of the two-sizes-too-small death trap of a career. Mouth to Zayn’s ear, whispering how beautiful and perfect and wonderful and, fuck, and everything he was, Louis fucked him into every new hotel bed, breaking it in. Because sometimes their job was insanity, but the only thing that remained constant was one another. The only thing that remained constant was Louis’ fluttery laughter, and Louis’ calming words, and Louis’ foxlike grin. A world away from Perrie, his mum, sisters, dad, everyone he ever knew, Louis caught him in his falls like Zayn once did for Liam, Louis kept him laughing like Zayn once did for Niall, Louis kept Zayn from hate-induced breakdowns like Zayn did for Harry. While everyone had Zayn, Zayn had Louis.
It’s not maybe anymore. Zayn trusted Louis to control him, tripped because he knew Louis would catch him. And Louis did. Until he didn’t.
*
Louis picks up on the seventh call. He doesn’t even say hello; just sits on his side of the phone, breathing into the receiver until Zayn starts talking. “I know, like,” Zayn starts, babbling because he’s too busy sobbing and heaving to think up proper sentences. “you hate my fucking guts right now, but I feel so alone, and –” he looks out the window of the second story to the studio, out at the fenced in buildings and the cars speeding by on the nearby street. “— and I couldn’t think of anybody to call but you, because you always, like, knew what to say? To make me feel safe.”
Still no answer. Louis’ gives away nothing but his soft breathing, and the occasional thump of movement in the background. Zayn waits and waits and waits for Louis to say fucking anything, crying into the phone and folding into himself, but nothing ever comes. Louis is stubborn in the worst kind of ways, so Zayn fills the silence between them, instead.
“I’m sorry,” he says, so quiet he’s not even sure it even came out of his mouth. “for leaving you. For hurting you. For abandoning you.” Inhale, exhale, inhale. “I’m sorry I’m just a filthy, used up dick of a person now. I’m sorry I’ve become so fucking hollow, I’m sorry I don’t even remember what it feels like to touch your skin anymore. I’m sorry I made you think it’s either you or Shahid, not neither or both. I’m sorry. For everything.”
Zayn’s sure Louis’ still not gonna speak, just listen. But then Zayn hears Louis’ voice for the first time in what feels like forever, and his chest clenches down around his heart, squeezing it to death. “You’re a cheater,” Louis says. “And a liar.”
“Okay,” Zayn whimpers. “Okay.”
“Did you get what you wanted? Lived the life you wanted to live so far after leaving us?” A pause. “Leaving me?”
Zayn’s crying again. “No,” he bites out, the sound desperate and lonely with only Zayn’s ears to hear it. “No, no, god, it hurts. Everything hurts. I left the band because I wanted to find me again, but leaving the band didn’t mean leaving you, Louis. I want you here, with me. I promise I never meant to leave you. Not you, never you.”
Louis doesn’t answer right away. He lets Zayn sob, gasp for breath, try to steady himself when the world feels so damn shaky. Then, as hard as cement, flowing out easy as rippling sand, he says, “Well,” then, stronger, “you did.”
Then Louis hangs up.