FIC, this is the scene where I swallow your heart..., liam/zayn
title: this is the scene where i swallow your heart (and you make me spit it back up again)
pairing: liam/zayn (mentioned liam/louis)
rating: (language, mild sexual ref.)
word count: ~ 6000
disclaimer: do not own 1D, also, sorry for the lack of/undeveloped niall.
summary: it’s too much and too little, everything and nothing, two things at once, simultaneously meeting at the crossroads and colliding. mild AU.
(very) loosely based around dirty valentine by siken.
fo padackleskifor giving me all the ziam feels needed to write this.
-
at twenty past four am, liam wakes up naked with a hangover and the suffocating smell of disinfectant.
at twenty three minutes past four am, liam dials eleven numbers and hangs up three seconds later.
at twenty four minutes past four am, liam dials eleven numbers and doesn’t hang up, he’s discounted by a clinical voice, a woman, and she tells him frankly to leave a message after the tone but he doesn’t, he didn’t call for her.
at twenty seven minutes past four am, liam leaves a message:
i thought i’d know what to say but i don’t. if you don’t want me to know where you are that’s okay…it’s fine but - i know that you’re hurt - i keep wondering whether its me after all and -i know you said it’s not me at all, you said its not my fault, you said its just how you were made or something, right? like this is all you know, this is all you can give and you don’t know why, isn’t that what you said? well that’s okay too but i just -thought it would be different this time
a minute later, liam goes to the bathroom and sees that he’s cleaned the vomit off the floor, he’s wiped down the toilet seat and taken his towel along with all his clothes and the hotel shampoo. he’s cleared the glass from the floor and the blood from the mirror and sanitised the sink
he’s left a lighter on the bedside table, it’s not his favourite lighter it’s the one with the mermaid on it. red lipstick and a face like she’s drowning. the discarded possessions are never acknowledged. just signs, categorical in liam’s mind alone. and the lighter, the toothbrush, the earring butterfly sit amongst the dust and the fluff and the words that zayn doesn’t say on the way out.
----
at five past eight pm liam is on a track. at seven past eight a train will come and the collision will kill him instantly. the impact will rupture his lungs, break five of his ribs, all individually crumpling inwards towards his heart. the pain is momentary, a touch and a click sensation of immense oblivion, a compelling sense of power too overwhelming to walk away from.
at six minutes past eight, he feels the track pressing up against the sole of his feet, too real, the brutality of a hospital room, metallic bed heads, white walls stained with psychosis and zayn, stitches playing dot to dot with his bruises. the flashing light in the distance isn’t bright enough.
at twenty minutes past eight, he’s pouring a drink. double grey goose and orange juice mixer. harry strokes his back, pushing him up against the bar as he passes and he spills some juice onto his fingers.
“you okay, you were late weren’t you"
“which one am i supposed to answer?”
“the first”, harry pushes a curl from his peripheral. one of the lucky ones whose attraction relies on the amount of time you spend with them, liam reckons there’s an equation that goes with it.
“tired a little, woke up early, got dressed and sat in the café all day”
“caroline saw you, she said”, harry nods and a girl to his left has noticed how pretty he is, she wants his number but she’s got acute introversion and her sex life is riddled with self-hate and dissatisfaction because of it. harry doesn’t flinch, scribbles eleven digits on a napkin nonchalantly and smiles.
“said you looked like shit”, he continues, “i thought it was just a morning thing but as usual, here you are you’ve outdone yourself”
“oh right”, liam nods and gestures towards the nameless girl at the bar, “hey caroline you’re looking different today”
“okay we’ve spoken about this”, harry laughs discreetly, flicking his hair from his eyes, “it’s not a thing, like an exclusive thing, we do our own-“
“thing?”, liam says and harry’s eyes crease up.
“now where exactly do you get off judging the exclusivity of my relationships, sir liam”, harry pouts a little, “master of the all-inclusive, they call you”
“'they' being you and caroline”, liam laughs and pours a glass of wine for a middle-aged man wearing an expensive suit. his mobile wallpaper is of an over-glossed promotional ferrari and liam guesses he is divorced, single, living alone.
“naturally”, harry says and the pause is stealthy, sneaks up on liam like a mass murderer in a blacked out room, he’s been trapped in there with you for an hour and you’ve only just remembered leaving the latch open but he’s found you now.
“so where’s zayn?”, his voice has gone throaty.
“i haven’t seen him”, liam tries to project honesty through his eyes but it’s always been hard when it comes to this. he hates lying to harry, his oldest friend, part of his genetic makeup and lies are nothing against biology.
“for how long? days...weeks…months hours?”
“c’mon harry”, liam sighs.
“this morning, then?”, harry knows and liam is momentarily caught by how well harry has him figured. he wishes his world were as compact and portable as harry’s, something he could carry with him like hand luggage, leave behind at bag drop and still know to brace himself for landing. harry had made his life simple and attainable, sailing through life with an average overall test score and instinct while liam had done something else.
“look, there’s a big welcome home thing for niall in three weeks”, harry keeps saying, “it sounds fun, you should bring zayn”
liam snorts, “i don’t think so”
“if he comes back, you should bring him”.
it’s not if, liam thinks, it’s just but, it’s always but.
-----
its one week later exactly, fifty five minutes past one am and liam is walking towards the train station from work, it's 18 degrees and he thinks he’ll be okay this time. it’s the sixth time that he’s had to scrabble around for bones, put them in the right order (scaphoid, radius, humerus, scapula), and find a glue strong enough to weld it all together. it’s the sixth time that zayn has left him at the roadside in parts but it’s the first time that he’s tried to reconstruct himself.
“liam”, someone says and when he turns around, it’s louis.
louis is closer than he expected and the streetlamp casts an artificial glow onto the reddening bruise beneath his eye. looks almost beautiful.
“louis, hi”
“yeah, hi”, louis rubs the back of his neck.
liam swallows, words knitting together inside his brain but louis pulls at the seam and they all come undone.
“i just saw you leave the bar and thought i’d better say something, you know, last week”
“right”, liam says, “how’s the eye?”
“it’s nothing serious”, his smile is too kind for someone so beat up, “stings like a bitch but a lot of things sting at the moment”
“sorry”, and it’s pathetic but it’s all hes got.
“it’s not your fault, liam, you know that”, louis soothes.
“i should have stopped him, shouldn’t have let him go at you like that”, he says, “i mean it was just a misunderstanding, wasn’t it, i should have known he’d react and-“
“-i hit him first”
“- he just doesn’t- wait, what?”
“zayn, i hit zayn first”, and liam bites his lip, licks the blood from the flesh. he isn’t used to this with louis, louis is everything good and reckless and unashamed. where zayn’s touch is desperate and solid and watertight, louis’ was fragile and dainty, fleeting but satisfying in contrast. but even the parallels therein brought liam’s mind back to zayn and despite it all he’d watched louis pull the zipper up of his jeans and slip out the door, leaving nothing behind.
“you hit zayn firs- why?”, liam retorts, he’s not angry but he is.
“liam, jesus”, louis exclaims, full of the passion that he’s never been able to tame, “are you fucking kidding me? the way he treats you, the way he never sticks around, the way you won’t even admit it”
“it’s not like that, lou”,
and louis is suddenly soft, clinging onto the skin of liam’s arm as if he wants to be inside it, wants to wear liam like a robe for the day and tell him who to be.
“tell me what it’s like then”, louis says, “please, tell me what it’s like”.
and he wants to. but it’s too much and too little, everything and nothing, two things at once, simultaneously meeting at the crossroads and colliding.
----
one week and two days later, at the exact same time, liam gets a missed call from a payphone. he calls back thirty seconds later and no one picks up.
----
three days later, liam dials eleven numbers and it goes to answer phone. why is it called an answer phone when the person you want never answers, harry says. so liam leaves a message:
hi, it’s me again. we didn’t leave things on great terms before, and we didn’t have a chance to sort things out. where are you? i know you don’t want to talk right now but even if you just text me, let me know where you were, that you were safe and -message deleted -
hi, its me. niall is having a welcome home thing in three days time, it’s the twenty-third. you remember niall, blonde niall, he used to work at the bar and you met him a couple times and said he was too loud, well him - message deleted-
zayn, it’s liam. there’s a thing happening on the twenty-third, you should come. i want you to come.
----
the next day at eight thirty five am, liam wakes up, brushes his teeth, throws on a t shirt and joggers, and goes for a run.
he used to leave zayn in the sheets, kiss at sleepy eyes and run every morning before it happened again. he’d jog past the café, through the little park near harry’s flat and cut round the back of the station, mind replaying the scenes in his head with every beat. battling with chronic fear of abandonment and respiratory difficulty.
in the first scene zayn is gone, the sheets are covered in blood and he’s left his heart at the foot of the bed.
the second one, zayn is underneath the covers, but when liam pulls it back it’s himself and he’s wearing all of zayn’s bruises and scars.
the third one, zayn is still asleep but the room's on fire and everything is burning and zayn’s holding the lighter with the mermaid on it.
and when he finds his way back to his own flat, sweat dripping from his neck and life pumping through his veins and through the soles of his feet, zayn is usually there.
----
four days later, it’s twenty nine minutes past eight and liam is rummaging through harry’s wardrobe for a shirt. his t-shirt and khaki pant combo was constructively side-eyed by harry, as expected, and it’s fifteen degrees out and harry was always good at deciphering the how to’s and the what not’s.
“the dark grey shirt”, harry instructs, “no the other one, with the black logo on it liam”.
“will this go with my khaki’s though?”
“are you insane, you’re not wearing those”, harry says, “caroline come look at what liam thinks he’s wearing to the party, look it’s the khaki’s again”
“harry, jesus”, liam hisses, “cut it out” and is thankful when caroline is busy doing her make-up.
“well put something else on, like”, harry bumps up beside him and pulls out some faded jeans, “these, they’re your size”.
“alright”
thirteen minutes later and they’re in a cab, all three of them bundled together in the back breathing in car exhaust and breathing out possibility. there are generally two ways that the night will go; the first consists of what they desire/deserve and the second consists of what they fear/deserve. in harry and caroline’s case, it can only go one of two ways. but for liam, the potentiality of both merging together, waving as they do because they’ve been here before and they’re very pleased to see him, is all too real.
“so is he coming?”, harry asks, blindly handing the driver a twenty and following.
“i haven’t seen him, i don’t know”, liam says and harry opens his mouth, tries to peal away at him again so he says, “i left him a message, he didn’t get back to me okay”
“just stay with me tonight, yeah?”, harry links an arm through his, “i’ll look out for you”
----
two hours and thirty one minutes later, it’s thirteen minutes past eleven and liam is sitting in between niall and harry, both paralysed with intoxication swaying off beat to three beat music and folding up and into him like origami paper.
liam had one beer and didn’t see the point. his conscious will tell him it's because harry needs a minder to stop himself from stripping and/or touching himself/others, but his subconscious is a little more belligerent, a lawyer in every sense of the word, and it tells him it's because he’s waiting for zayn and he wants to take all of him in. misses him. needs unpolluted contact and the clear-head of sobriety.
“i wish you were having a good time, limb”, niall slurs.
liam pats his back, “no i am, this is great, as long as you are that’s all that matters mate”
“your problem, limb, is that you need to start caring about”, niall prods an unsteady finger at liam’s chest, “what’s in here, you know? ‘cause no one knows what’s gonna happen, you know, we could all just fall onto a train track one day and if all you’ve ever done is sit around waiting for something to happen then-”
liam nods, understands even through the murky fog of inebriation that there is an element of profundity to niall’s words. niall doesn’t get to finish his sentence because louis is circling, blue eyes a little frantic from the martini’s and the baby hairs of his nape curling in on themselves from the sweat.
“i’ve been looking for you”, louis says, “knew i’d find you as far away from the bar as possible”
“you know me”, liam smiles and reverts his gaze instinctively.
“yeah i do”, louis nods, “look, i just wanted to apologise for what i said a couple of weeks ago, i don’t know”, he exhales.
“i”, louis continues, “i guess i still care about you, liam, want you to be happy”
and it’s moments like these when liam gets that little jolt in his chest, like holding your breath for too long but when you try to breathe again you realise you’re underwater.
sometimes he forgets that louis came before, one year two months and three weeks before to be exact. it was brief and non-committal, but by the time liam had told him it was time to let go, louis had already started holding on.
“i know, i know”, liam says and his eyes scrabble through the crowds, they search for zayn, needs a parachute to reign in all this free-falling.
“he won’t come liam”, louis says, “you know he won’t”
----
it’s twenty minutes past two exactly when liam is at the bar, he’s ordering a gin and tonic because his fear of being different is somewhat greater than his fear of being a lonely drunk. he won’t be though, can’t be because
“i thought i was the only person who could get you drunk, li”, zayn is behind him, lips testing the rim of his earlobes and breath, tobacco and root beer, and liam pushes back to fill the distance that only he can see. zayn fiddles with the thread of harry's shirt, "one drink and you look like everybody else"
“you came”, liam smiles, “i didn’t know-“
“well i didn’t want you to be lonely”, zayn says into his neck, sliding fingers and heat passed him and then leaning into the bar, “i know how you can be”
“what’s that supposed to mean?”, liam presses and he’s trying to be serious and hide his elation. wishes he was that guarded lover at the bar, all straight lines, teasing smiles and question marks. zayn, almost.
“social situations, not really your forté", zayn teases, “i bet you haven’t said more than five words to anyone but harry tonight”
liam presses his lips together; louis louis louis slips through his teeth.
“bar man doesn’t count”, he continues and then his hands are at liam’s throat, thumb stroking up against his mouth, “you look tired, li, you tired?”
“a little”, he leans into the touch and shuts his eyes to feel it, “haven’t really slept” and zayn’s eyes dip and liam wishes he hadn’t said it.
“let me go for a cig and we can leave after if you’re ready”, zayn says, pulls a packet from his back pocket and falters.
liam grabs onto his hand unconsciously, “no, stay, i’ll come with you” and there’s so much desperation in his voice that it even clings to his tongue on the way out.
zayn nods, “okay, i’m right here”.
----
seventeen minutes later and they’re on the night bus home. zayn’s words come endlessly without filter, and liam clutches at droplets of information as to where zayn has been, any clues he gets he pieces together. the pieces all fit but the puzzle is blank.
so instead he draws patterns of patterns on zayn’s skin, slides his fingers over indents and edges of tattoo’s, the rise and fall of his bones and lets his mouth taste.
i’ve missed you, liam wants to say but he says
“i can’t wait to get you home”, instead because there are so few words in their language and zayn only knows half of them
so zayn replies by nestling his head against liam’s shoulder and stroking his thumb against his index, letting out a little hum as he does so that liam knows that he is home and if he had the choice, he wouldn’t leave this time.
----
at eleven minutes past four am the same night, zayn fucks liam into white sheets. twenty minutes prior to this, he lays liam down, untangles his limbs like an injured bird with its wings caught in wire and strips him. they kiss like this for nine minutes, liam with his bones, his hands and his blue veins exposed and zayn, cottony and rough against his skin, knowing which places to touch, which kind of touch will permeate and anchor itself somewhere.
“take your top off”, liam whispers, “want to see you”
“not yet”, zayn says, and then he's under the covers and his tongue is finding its way around independently; sucking at liam until he folds inwards.
liam’s fingers claw at the seams of zayn’s clothes, pulling and needing but zayn is resistant, knows that liam has four seconds before all rational comprehension dissolves.
“c’mon babe”, liam says, “i need to see-“
at thirty six minutes past seven, approximately three hours and twenty five minutes later liam awakes, checks the time, sits on the toilet lips tight from the tenderness and then undresses a sleeping zayn. he plays with the solidarity of zayn underneath him for a minute or two, before lifting him limb by limb, exploring every unseen pimple and marking it softly with his teeth.
eight minutes later, liam finds three, similarly shaped indents to the right of zayns hip bone. they’re surrounded by a red halo and zayn’s lashes tremble as liam grazes his thumb against them.
he carefully slips zayn into one of his t-shirts and moulds himself around him like a paper mache. as if the sun could set the liquid on their skin and in the morning they’d be indivisible.
----
they spend two weeks sitting in the café, sipping black coffee and promising a future that dematerialises the moment the words touch their lips. it’s enslaving though, that feeling of knowing someone right down to the very grain of them, the particles that form them. and even the intention to know so methodically is enough for liam, the simple concept that there is someone that craves him this much.
they never talk about things that came before though, it’s like every time zayn comes back they’re starting again and this time things will be better; zayn doesn’t mention the fight, doesn’t mention louis or the ceramic in his knuckles, he doesn’t mention where he’s been and he doesn’t mention why his phone keeps buzzing.
they spend two weeks asleep in each other’s arms as if the world outside is too big, too superfluous and in retrospect, they only asked for these four walls when god came along with his architectural plan and his measurements.
two weeks but after two weeks exactly, the white paint on the walls starts to peal away, vulgarity and infection starts to crack through the ceiling and there aren’t enough supplies to keep painting it over.
“who was that?”, liam asks, it’s evening and liam is already late for work, “everything okay?”
zayn nods but his eyes are less presumptuous, “fine, someone i used to know”
“what did they say?”, liam slides on zayn’s black jumper, taking in his scent.
“nothing that i can’t handle”
liam turns to him, “i didn’t say you couldn’t handle it”
“well what’s the problem then?”, zayn retorts, his synapses are wired and he’s anxious about it.
“i don’t know, zayn”, liam says, “you’re the one with the problems and i’m the one who waits for you to figure them out, remember?”
“liam”
“what are you scared of?”, liam’s asking and he cant take the words back now.
“leave it alone, li”, zayn cracks, “i came back for you remember, isn’t that enough? i’ve come back and now you want more, now you want this as well”
“because i’m scared, zayn”, he swallows and they both stare at each other for a second too long.
“don’t say that”, zayn whispers, and his phone is buzzing in his hand again, plays out a tune and the rhythm is overpowering, drums into liam like the vibrations of the train against his bones.
“i have to go”, liam mutters, “i’m late”
he leaves the flat, shuts the door behind him. he’s almost at the café when the images bleed into his skull and clot, the scenes of zayn in the bed and zayn not in the bed, and he rushes back to apartment twenty one, lets his body sink into zayn and presses his lips against his neck.
“three hours okay?”, he says into his mouth, “three hours and i’ll be back”.
----
it’s four hours later, fifty one minutes past eleven when liam unlocks the door to a silent, shadowed room. he finds zayn on the sofa watching late night bid tv and knows something has changed fundamentally.
“zayn”, liam says, he’s tiptoeing but he isn’t sure why and he’s whispering but he isn’t sure why. his heart is pulsating sadistically in his chest and he isn’t sure why that’s happening either.
and then zayn turns round and there’s tears sprinkling his lashes like sugar droplets, a little salty on the tongue.
“i need help, li”, his voice breaks, “you’ve got to help me”.
----
two days, twelve hours and twenty minutes later and liam is at the bar, harry is wiping down the tables and liam is loading the dishwasher.
“-so caroline runs out crying, tells me i’m a dick for cheating on her”, he scoffs, “cheating on her liam, those were her exact words, i thought it was a prank i swear to god”
“it kind of was cheating though, harry”, liam says simply.
“i cheated her in the sense that i told her i’d be at home when in actuality me and harriet went for a drink first”, he shrugs, “okay so i hold my hands up for that, i’m guilty, but that has nothing to do with infidelity”
“well you should have laid down the law, told caz that sleeping with someone more than four times a week, sharing a wardrobe and a pet cat didn’t constitute a relationship” liam smirks.
“alright, whatever”, harry mutters.
“and harry and harriet was never going to be a good idea anyway”
“well caroline managed to scare her away, hasn’t replied to any of my texts” harry sighs.
liam fumbles around for the right words, and it takes him five minutes to come up with something coherent.
“look, harry, i’ve got a big ask of you”, he starts, “and i know this is pretty huge and i hate having to do this but you’re my best friend and”, he swallows air for inspiration, “i didn’t know who else to ask about-“
“you need money”, harry says and liam backtracks in his head, doesn’t remember letting it slip.
“erm, yeah”, he exhales, “yeah, i need money”
harry nods, “how much are we talking about here?”
“two grand”, liam tears at the skin of his mouth and harry visibly folds.
“jesus, liam, what do you need two grand for?”
the words come to liam like lines from a script, rehearsed right down to the stage directions, the way he runs a hand over his forehead and pauses for one, two, three
“i’ve got myself into some debt”, he says, “the sharks, you know, when i was out of work i loaned some money and i still haven’t recovered, not yet”
harry is quiet for a moment.
“it’d just be a loan, harry, you’ll get it all back once i’m back on my feet”
“why didn’t you tell me before?”, harry frowns.
“i didn’t know what to-“
“it’s not a problem, lee, i’ll help you out of course i will”, harry says, “ 'course i will”.
thirty seven minutes later, liam slumps himself down onto his bed, crawls into zayn’s chest and cries for an hour.
“i’m sorry” zayn breathes into his hair, kisses his eyelids and the wet of his cheeks, “i love you, i’m sorry”
----
four days, three hours and one minute, and liam goes for a run. he thinks back to three nights before, it’s a running tradition, the overuse of the heart recalling the last moments he had spent with zayn.
“i went to see mum”, zayn had said.
they’re lying on the bed together and liam stares down at him. zayn makes a rule not to speak about his family, his mother in particular; liam comes to terms with the fact that the only parts of zayn he will ever know are the ones he can see.
“you went all the way back home?”, liam asks, it’s 200km from london to brighton, the calculations filter into his head and it’s these things that he knows, the statistics not the reasons why.
zayn nods, and liam turns inwards, sits up on the crook of his elbow to study him.
“what did she say?”
zayn came to terms with his mother’s death in the way that children do, if you want something enough it’s real and its yours, and zayn wanted his mother a lot. he was sixteen when she died, and liam thinks a part of him still is. still searching, still finding and losing all over again.
“nothing”, zayn says quietly, quietly enough for liam to reach down and stroke his hair back, “i don’t think she knows what to say anymore”
“maybe she wants you to figure it out”
he shakes his head, “i couldn’t even figure out how to go to the funeral, couldn’t figure out how to get up for school and graduate, ‘figure out how to stop missing her”
liam swallows down a lump and curls into zayn’s side, makes a little strained noise in his throat and watches zayn lose himself in dreams.
liam runs home. rain and perspiration emulsify against his skin and he heads into the shower. the steam rises and he bites his lip when he sees the faded press of an ‘x’ against the glass.
----
two days, nine hours and twenty minutes later exactly, and liam is at work, it’s a sunday so the bar closes at ten pm and it’s been a slow day so there isn’t much to do now. usually at this hour on this particular day, they’d be underhand; swigging back shots and blasting music from harry’s ipod until eleven pm, and then they’d probably roll out onto the streets and stay up at harry’s making a mess. but this is different, harry hasn’t said more than three words to liam since six pm and he knows why.
“your dad called me yesterday”, harry says, one hand locking up and the other in his pocket.
“what did he have to say?”, liam asks.
“nothing much. he can’t get hold of you but i told him you’ve been busy”
“right”, liam licks the dry skin on his lips.
“we spoke about your situation”, harry’s voice gets lost in his throat and he’s standing light years away, liam closes the small gulf of space between them but it isn’t that simple. it’s like they’re on different earths and their orbit doesn’t correlate.
“my- "
“yeah your financial situation, you know?”, his words come out like blows to the chest, “only geoff seems to think that you didn’t loan any money at all, that they paid for all of that, your rent”, he spits, “it’s funny because the thought never crossed my mind, that in the end everything you did was for him”
“harry-“
“don’t bullshit me liam, if you’re going to stand there with your bullshit i’m walking away”
“i’m not, harry, look”, liam breathes, “it was for zayn, and i’m sorry but he was in trouble-“
“liam, he’s not in trouble, he is the trouble”, harry scoffs deliriously, and liam doesn’t think he’s ever seen him like this, so ground down and wasted, “he’s always been the trouble and you will never escape it, he will ruin you every time”.
“no, harry, look”, liam tries, “it isn’t his fault, he doesn’t want to be like this, he’s never wanted to be like this he’s just never had the chance, no one has given him the chance”
“the chance for what?”, harry growls, “you don’t even know where he is. do you even know what he needs the money for, liam? do you?”
liam presses his lips together, needs a valid answer, some excuse for the way his life has panned out. the way that everything starts and ends with zayn. the way that everything is warped, faultlessly flawed about their dynamic, their relationship in a way that blinds them, sets them tumbling and tripping back together.
“fuck’s sake”, harry mutters.
“i’m sorry”, liam breathes, “it was wrong and…i hate myself for it and -. i just didn’t know what else to do”
“so you lied to me”, harry nods, “because that was an option. i can’t even imagine hurting you the way you’ve hurt me. i don’t think i’d even know how to”
“harry-“
“he’s a fucking disease liam”, harry draws back, slipping away from the illumination of the streetlamp, “and you won’t see it but i need you to, because i care about you so much, no matter what you do i care”
“you don’t understand”, liam’s voice cracks, harry doesn’t hear but he doesn’t need to, “you don’t understand what this is, what this feels like”
“i’m gonna go, liam. i’ve got to go”, and harry dissolves into the black taking everything with him. it’s twelve minutes before liam makes his way towards the train station, carrying nothing but his backpack, his sadness and his hands.
----
one week, one day and twelve hours and its thirteen minutes past eleven am when liam comes home from a fifteen minute jog and finds zayn sitting on the bed, worn-out holdall hanging on to his back like an external organ and a beat up eye. his only constants.
liam is at his side in one, two seconds, pressing his lips against the array of colours staining his skin and whispering things like, "are you okay? baby what happened? does this hurt?"
zayn breathes against him. arms not strong enough to close around liam anymore, to re-assure him that this time forever will mean something. the electricity in his eyes is lost, the current isn't a perpetual flow anymore, it ends somewhere and wherever the finish line is, so is liam. where he's always been.
"i'm gonna run you a bath, yeah?', liam says, trapping zayn's fingers into the prism of his hands, "everything's okay now".
"no, li, no", zayn groans, holding his chest as each word rips through his body.
"are you hungry?", liam asks, kneeling at zayn's feet, "what do you need? tell me what you need".
"i need to figure myself out", zayn says, and his eyes are wet all of a sudden, "i've made such a mess and...i need to start clearing it up".
"what do you mean?", liam's lips crack with thirst.
"i mean that", zayn brings his hands to his eyes and his nails are wretched, etched with dirt and dry blood, "i came to say goodbye, li"
"you don't mean that", and liam is smiling, a tragically beautiful smile that he only ever saw once, "you're hurt, zayn, you're tired and you need me to look after you".
"i don't- i can't li", zayn stutters, "this was always gonna’ end this way. you always deserved more, someone else, someone like louis, someone who didn't come with an escape route and a back up plan"
and it's clockwork, as if there was a timer set from the first day he met zayn at the train station that morning, his toes tipping a little too close to the track. it was as if the seconds had been counting down ever since to that precise lapse of time for liam's heart to snap, violently and bloody in his hands. the blood on the sheets and the heart by the bed in those scenes before had never been zayn's, it had always been his.
"you can't do this", liam says through blunt teeth, "you can't say this, why are you saying this, i don't want louis its always you, only you".
"li, i'm doing this for you. i'm doing this because i can't keep hurting you like this, because i owe you two grand and i can't pay it back. because i owe you so many hours, days and months that you will never get back".
"i don't care", liam sobs, "i love you, all of that means nothing. i want to help you, zayn, you don't have to run away anymore"
"i was never running away from you", zayn frowns and cups liam's face with his hands, "i was always running to you"
"then stay. for me, please"
zayn removes liam's hands from his thighs, disconnects their limbs and their memories and their souls. he stands up and leans down, kisses liam's salty skin and bites softly into the numb of it.
"i'm sorry", he presses into his forehead and knows it isn't enough. means as little as forever, and goodbye and i love you.
liam's body rejects the feeling, paralysed in an anesthetized state of awareness until he hears zayn by the porch. there are all these tears scratching their way through him and he fingers them blankly as if they shouldn't be there, as if zayn should have taken them with him too.
"zayn, wait", liam jerks up
is breathless when he finds him at the doorway, "you haven't left anything, you always leave something behind but you haven't".
zayn shifts, "i’ve got nothing left, li, my pockets are empty, i’ve got nothing left for you"
-
at five past eight pm liam is on a track. at seven past eight a train will come and the collision will kill him instantly. the impact will rupture his lungs, break five of his ribs, all individually crumpling inwards towards his heart. the pain is momentary, a touch and a click sensation of immense oblivion, a compelling sense of power too overwhelming to walk away from.
at six minutes past eight, he feels the track pressing up against the sole of his feet, too real, the brutality of a hospital room, metallic bed heads, white walls stained with psychosis and zayn, stitches playing dot to dot with his bruises. the flashing light in the distance isn’t bright enough.
at eighteen minutes past eight, liam starts his shift and he lives.
-