Fic: I knew it when I held you
Title: I knew it when I held you
Prompt: holding hands
Pairing: Zayn/Louis
Rating: R
Word Count: 2300
Warnings: angst, swearing, drinking.
Summary: In the morning, Louis spills out of the door and Zayn feels the bed rise with the missing weight of Louis pressed up against him, but he stays in bed for as long as he can, hangs on the frail whim of Louis walking back and climbing in and never, ever leaving his side.
This was written for 1directionelite.
Louis's all sharp-edged and calloused bones, limbs sinking between sheets, alcohol and adolescent. He breathes shallow and faint, eyelids heavy and red-rimmed. His fingers curl around Zayn's and it's all there is of him that feels remotely close to what he remembers home felt like.
The bed dips under their weight. Zayn breathes, and it's thin and subdued like he might be afraid it'd rouse Louis up, and his eyes flutter; like they're following the pattern of Louis's breathing. And sometimes, he is.
But no matter how careful and anticipating he is, Louis sets off and starts as he pleases; spills outside the door in the morning, soundless like a gentle wind. Zayn's only left with the faint smell of his skin scorched against his as a reminder he'd really been there.
Louis doesn't call.
Louis just shows up when Zayn's expecting him to; like an unspoken order of things.
Zayn gets up after hours of fighting back the daylight creeping up. He puts on a shirt of Louis's and walks out the door wrapped up in a hoodie that only does so much to enshroud him between so many people. Zayn goes down to the grocery; gets Louis's favourites and some instant curry noodles.
The apartment's empty when he gets back. It always is. All that he hears in the shadiness of it is Bowie piping and how he remembers Louis's feeble voice from the night before. Zayn piles up their shirts together, and he makes sure to separate the whites from the blacks and all's that Louis keeps telling him to do. And there's so much Zayn can remember, but Louis's voice dies out at letter ends and syllables and he tries to hold on to what's left of it.
There are so many people. And so many people was never Zayn's thing; it was always Louis's. But now Zayn has so many people because of Louis. They ask about how they're both doing. They ask about how he's doing. And Zayn can only nod and say 'okay' and nod again because they look like they genuinely care.
His lecture notes are all thrown in together. Jolted down in the same one notebook. Doodled over, and over and it carries Louis's distinctive scribbles and his own sketches somewhere there. Louis always liked Zayn's sketches, told him he could go somewhere with a knack like that. He's the only one who's told him that. Zayn jots down more letters, they compel words, and they press out sentences, but he isn't entirely sure they're what he means.
Even english has become a struggle; saying words and hoping they made sense or sounded even close to what he meant.To be honest, most of the time, Zayn doesn't even know what is it he's doing.
Harry and Niall drag Zayn for brunch, they make it seem like fun. They make the whole world seem like there's nothing wrong. Zayn picks on his food, tries to disappear in the million voices in his head and away from so many people talking out here. Zayn breathes out shakily, and Niall and Harry look concerned. He hates it.
It's just a few seconds before Louis flops on the chair next to him, cigarette drooping between his lips. His eyes are smiling but they're wilting and Zayn doesn't know how is it that that's fine.
"Hey, boys," Louis tugs the cigarette between two fingers and moves to press his lips against the side of Zayn's head. Then he smiles, drapes his legs over Niall's lap and mock frowns. "Where's my coffee, peasants?"
Harry's on his feet before Zayn could as much as blink, which he now thinks, Harry does on purpose. And he hates it. He hates it that his friends have to walk on egg shells around him; consider what's best for him without his own voice. But he also hates that he knows they're only like this because they're worried.
Louis grins, pinches out Zayn's untouched pancakes and propells it into his mouth.
Zayn picks up a fork and eats.
Niall wraps his arms around Louis's legs, smiles fondly at him like he's the greatest person he's ever seen. And he is. Zayn looks at Louis and he doesn't reckon anyone's as beautiful.
"So, how's your day's been?" he asks, and Zayn knows better not to talk so he just shrugs, lifts his head up so his eyes can meet the challenging look in Louis's own. "So then, let's go," he pushes off the chair, presses a kiss on Niall's blonde wisps and dazzles Harry with that smile.
"Go where?" Zayn's glued to his chair, looks up at Louis like he knows what he's thinking and he wants in anyways.
"I don't know, somewhere, out of here." He says and he's still smiling, and Zayn figures, whatever, since when did he know any different. "Do you trust me?"
Zayn breathes the yes like he desperately needs to, like he doesn't know what else there is to breathe around Louis if not a yes.
"Buzzing! Come along then," He outstretches his hand, and Zayn reaches out to clasp his fingers around it, and there isn't anything in his will that he can do to prevent the side of his lips from curling up.
They stroll down on their feet to a shabby locale downtown. Red bricks and smoked walls pen in around, and Zayn finds himself pulling out a fag between his shaky lips, Louis lightening it up for him, and smiling.
He's really smiling. And It's not like Louis doesn't do enough of smiling. Louis smiles a whole lot, around every corner a lot, at every glance, a lot. But Louis's smiles are cringes and squirms and fighting wars.
But it's when he really smiles that Zayn knows.
"We should do this more often," Louis says, their arms brush against another and they walk, and walk eminently close in the dark alleyway.
"I have classes and-"
"You always have classes," Louis says, smiling like he'd just won the argument. Zayn laughs disbelievingly, secures his arm in a headlock around Louis's neck, and they laugh.
The Laugh too hard they barely catch their breaths. Laugh too hard, Zayn doubles over. "And you're always out there being yourself,"
"Which is why you should be too! Nothing's holding us back. If I told you we should run away somewhere new, somewhere no one knows us there, right now, you wouldn't hold back. You'd go with me, right?"
"Are we?"
Louis's laughing. "Hypothetically, Z. Would you?"
"Yes, definitely." Zayn breathes it out like he doesn't know what else there is to breathe around Louis if not a yes.
"So let's go somewhere today! Fuck everyone else! Just you and me, somewhere new."
"Okay," Zayn says, looks at Louis like he's all his world, and he is. "Okay, let's go, let's get out of here,"
And Louis's laughing, open and free and real like Zayn wishes it would always be. His fingers curl around Zayn's, and they run towards the first strike of sun beyond the alleyway. They get a cab, pull out bills and the cab follows where there's sun.
"When the sun ends," Zayn says.
"When there's no light,"
They don't know anyone, and everyone. There're fluorescent lights at the right end of the street, and they beam at the corner, fill the entire street with their illumination. Louis tugs Zayn's hand towards the building, and Zayn doesn't question it for a split second. Let's Louis push their bodies between the swarm of people.
Music blares in the entire room, loud beating that downs the laughter of the people and Zayn's thankful for that. It's loud and he thinks the room quavers around them, but there's so many things he's thinking and none of them are necessarily correct. His brain swims around shots, and Louis gets grabby and determined; gets Zayn as close as humanely possibly. Brings their bodies so close there's barely room for oxygen.
And that's where Zayn likes it, and Louis knows.
Louis breathes against Zayn's neck and his chest tightens, lungs and centre tightening, tightening. He breathes him in and closes his eyes and holds his hand, and it's closest there will ever be to home. There are a million words he thinks of that he wouldn't be able to say when the intoxication wears off, but his voice's vanquishes around the ache of wanting Zayn much closer and yet not having him there.
Soft, muted, and not at all sounds smooth out against Zayn's skin. Silent pleas and claims for this to be okay, for them to be okay. They seep through Zayn's skin, right to when he can't tackle them away anymore; presses Louis flat against the nearest wall, and smacks their lips together in despair.
Louis's fingers thread through Zayn's dark hair, bites his lips and rasp against Zayn's frame. He swallows down the groan leaving Zayn's throat, and Zayn's breathing hard and fast and his lungs cling to his chest, too fast, too soon and air is a problem but so is Louis right now. He tries to catch his breath when Louis pushes and prods him against the adjoining door.
"Fuck, Zayn," He breathes, against Zayn's skin, drags his fingers against his side. "Do you trust me?"
And Zayn doesn't respond, because really, Louis should have it all figured out by now. Zayn picks his head up and kisses him, and Louis sighs into his mouth in relief, desperately sinking his teeth into Zayn's bottom lip. And Louis knows, but he asks because Zayn's breakable bones and fervour, and he doesn't want to do this to him.
"Buzzing." he says against Louis's lips, "buzzing,"
Louis laughs, rests his hands on Zayn's chest and he's smirking, hitching Zayn's shirt up and catching Zayn's glazed look with his own, misted over with want.
Zayn’s head tips back, and he tries to catch his breathe but it's a resigned hope when Louis's in the same room, or of all, Louis up and against him the way he is now. Louis rips the rest of their clothes off, fucks them against the stall door. Fucks them breathless and needy and there's teeth and claws and intimate susurration and slurs.
Then Louis's pulling his pants up, and he's too fast for Zayn to keep up to, because they're outside in the crisp night air again in seconds, hooting at passerby's and laughing without a care. "We need to get back," Zayn says among the laughter, "tomorrow there's t-tom-" Louis dries up his words with a teasing kiss, and they sink down at the wet and dainty stairs of the building, stringing their fingers around each other and smiling.
Zayn's tugging him up towards an tattoo lock-up.
"Really, Z? Be a little less predictable, at least."
"Why? you see through me anyways,"
Zayn props down in a chair, folds out a paper Louis didn't know he kept in his pockets all along. It's a thin tracing of words, that he saw Zayn scribbling out many many times, but he doesn't ask what it is. Zayn's tattoos are always cryptic and personal and they're his only way with words, so Louis doesn't ask, just lets them sly out against his skin in hushed whispers when Zayn needs them to be.
And Louis knows Zayn doesn't mind the pain and sting as the needle scrape his skin, but his fingers curl around Zayn's because that where it feels right.
They stumble out of the shop an hour or so later, "We need, like, money," Louis slurs, "We've used up all our money." And for once, Zayn's laughing when Louis's being pensive because this whole ordeal didn't even occur to him possible. "Z, it's not," but he's laughing along. "not funny," he frowns at Zayn then, "we can't get back,"
Zayn groans, because there really isn't anything they can do at this point except maybe find a decently pleasant place to stretch out in till the sun comes up.
"Your phone," Louis cries a while later. "Harry'll pick us up,"
"Oh," of course, Harry. Zayn pulls out his phone, and it's glaring against the darkness of the night and their faces. There're many texts and calls and most of all are from Liam and all Zayn wants is to call Harry right now even though the sensible thing to do is call Liam. But Liam's all worried looks and scolding, and none of them can deal with it right now.
They spend the time (a long time, at that) waiting for Harry, pressed up against each other, convulsed with laugher and hands secured around each other. Harry brings Niall, which is probably a good idea; having to haul both their woozy weights into the back of the car.
They hardly keep their hands off of each other in the back seat, which they don't know who's idea was it. But it's a pretty great goddamn idea. And there's Chris Martin's singing filling up the car, conveying their perception.
Niall and Harry bring them back to their apartment, call Liam to tell him they've got back alright, and don't leave until they've tucked them both into bed. (which is a struggle when none wants to go the fuck to sleep at it.) They lay close that they're fleshes melt into one, subdued breaths and murmur of words pressed against their blazing skin. That's where it feels right; hands clasped around each other and bodies ravelled.
In the morning, Louis spills out of the door and Zayn feels the bed rise with the missing weight of Louis pressed up against him, but he stays in bed for as long as he can, hangs on the frail whim of Louis walking back and climbing in and never, ever leaving his side.
Prompt: holding hands
Pairing: Zayn/Louis
Rating: R
Word Count: 2300
Warnings: angst, swearing, drinking.
Summary: In the morning, Louis spills out of the door and Zayn feels the bed rise with the missing weight of Louis pressed up against him, but he stays in bed for as long as he can, hangs on the frail whim of Louis walking back and climbing in and never, ever leaving his side.
This was written for 1directionelite.
Louis's all sharp-edged and calloused bones, limbs sinking between sheets, alcohol and adolescent. He breathes shallow and faint, eyelids heavy and red-rimmed. His fingers curl around Zayn's and it's all there is of him that feels remotely close to what he remembers home felt like.
The bed dips under their weight. Zayn breathes, and it's thin and subdued like he might be afraid it'd rouse Louis up, and his eyes flutter; like they're following the pattern of Louis's breathing. And sometimes, he is.
But no matter how careful and anticipating he is, Louis sets off and starts as he pleases; spills outside the door in the morning, soundless like a gentle wind. Zayn's only left with the faint smell of his skin scorched against his as a reminder he'd really been there.
Louis doesn't call.
Louis just shows up when Zayn's expecting him to; like an unspoken order of things.
Zayn gets up after hours of fighting back the daylight creeping up. He puts on a shirt of Louis's and walks out the door wrapped up in a hoodie that only does so much to enshroud him between so many people. Zayn goes down to the grocery; gets Louis's favourites and some instant curry noodles.
The apartment's empty when he gets back. It always is. All that he hears in the shadiness of it is Bowie piping and how he remembers Louis's feeble voice from the night before. Zayn piles up their shirts together, and he makes sure to separate the whites from the blacks and all's that Louis keeps telling him to do. And there's so much Zayn can remember, but Louis's voice dies out at letter ends and syllables and he tries to hold on to what's left of it.
There are so many people. And so many people was never Zayn's thing; it was always Louis's. But now Zayn has so many people because of Louis. They ask about how they're both doing. They ask about how he's doing. And Zayn can only nod and say 'okay' and nod again because they look like they genuinely care.
His lecture notes are all thrown in together. Jolted down in the same one notebook. Doodled over, and over and it carries Louis's distinctive scribbles and his own sketches somewhere there. Louis always liked Zayn's sketches, told him he could go somewhere with a knack like that. He's the only one who's told him that. Zayn jots down more letters, they compel words, and they press out sentences, but he isn't entirely sure they're what he means.
Even english has become a struggle; saying words and hoping they made sense or sounded even close to what he meant.To be honest, most of the time, Zayn doesn't even know what is it he's doing.
Harry and Niall drag Zayn for brunch, they make it seem like fun. They make the whole world seem like there's nothing wrong. Zayn picks on his food, tries to disappear in the million voices in his head and away from so many people talking out here. Zayn breathes out shakily, and Niall and Harry look concerned. He hates it.
It's just a few seconds before Louis flops on the chair next to him, cigarette drooping between his lips. His eyes are smiling but they're wilting and Zayn doesn't know how is it that that's fine.
"Hey, boys," Louis tugs the cigarette between two fingers and moves to press his lips against the side of Zayn's head. Then he smiles, drapes his legs over Niall's lap and mock frowns. "Where's my coffee, peasants?"
Harry's on his feet before Zayn could as much as blink, which he now thinks, Harry does on purpose. And he hates it. He hates it that his friends have to walk on egg shells around him; consider what's best for him without his own voice. But he also hates that he knows they're only like this because they're worried.
Louis grins, pinches out Zayn's untouched pancakes and propells it into his mouth.
Zayn picks up a fork and eats.
Niall wraps his arms around Louis's legs, smiles fondly at him like he's the greatest person he's ever seen. And he is. Zayn looks at Louis and he doesn't reckon anyone's as beautiful.
"So, how's your day's been?" he asks, and Zayn knows better not to talk so he just shrugs, lifts his head up so his eyes can meet the challenging look in Louis's own. "So then, let's go," he pushes off the chair, presses a kiss on Niall's blonde wisps and dazzles Harry with that smile.
"Go where?" Zayn's glued to his chair, looks up at Louis like he knows what he's thinking and he wants in anyways.
"I don't know, somewhere, out of here." He says and he's still smiling, and Zayn figures, whatever, since when did he know any different. "Do you trust me?"
Zayn breathes the yes like he desperately needs to, like he doesn't know what else there is to breathe around Louis if not a yes.
"Buzzing! Come along then," He outstretches his hand, and Zayn reaches out to clasp his fingers around it, and there isn't anything in his will that he can do to prevent the side of his lips from curling up.
They stroll down on their feet to a shabby locale downtown. Red bricks and smoked walls pen in around, and Zayn finds himself pulling out a fag between his shaky lips, Louis lightening it up for him, and smiling.
He's really smiling. And It's not like Louis doesn't do enough of smiling. Louis smiles a whole lot, around every corner a lot, at every glance, a lot. But Louis's smiles are cringes and squirms and fighting wars.
But it's when he really smiles that Zayn knows.
"We should do this more often," Louis says, their arms brush against another and they walk, and walk eminently close in the dark alleyway.
"I have classes and-"
"You always have classes," Louis says, smiling like he'd just won the argument. Zayn laughs disbelievingly, secures his arm in a headlock around Louis's neck, and they laugh.
The Laugh too hard they barely catch their breaths. Laugh too hard, Zayn doubles over. "And you're always out there being yourself,"
"Which is why you should be too! Nothing's holding us back. If I told you we should run away somewhere new, somewhere no one knows us there, right now, you wouldn't hold back. You'd go with me, right?"
"Are we?"
Louis's laughing. "Hypothetically, Z. Would you?"
"Yes, definitely." Zayn breathes it out like he doesn't know what else there is to breathe around Louis if not a yes.
"So let's go somewhere today! Fuck everyone else! Just you and me, somewhere new."
"Okay," Zayn says, looks at Louis like he's all his world, and he is. "Okay, let's go, let's get out of here,"
And Louis's laughing, open and free and real like Zayn wishes it would always be. His fingers curl around Zayn's, and they run towards the first strike of sun beyond the alleyway. They get a cab, pull out bills and the cab follows where there's sun.
"When the sun ends," Zayn says.
"When there's no light,"
They don't know anyone, and everyone. There're fluorescent lights at the right end of the street, and they beam at the corner, fill the entire street with their illumination. Louis tugs Zayn's hand towards the building, and Zayn doesn't question it for a split second. Let's Louis push their bodies between the swarm of people.
Music blares in the entire room, loud beating that downs the laughter of the people and Zayn's thankful for that. It's loud and he thinks the room quavers around them, but there's so many things he's thinking and none of them are necessarily correct. His brain swims around shots, and Louis gets grabby and determined; gets Zayn as close as humanely possibly. Brings their bodies so close there's barely room for oxygen.
And that's where Zayn likes it, and Louis knows.
Louis breathes against Zayn's neck and his chest tightens, lungs and centre tightening, tightening. He breathes him in and closes his eyes and holds his hand, and it's closest there will ever be to home. There are a million words he thinks of that he wouldn't be able to say when the intoxication wears off, but his voice's vanquishes around the ache of wanting Zayn much closer and yet not having him there.
Soft, muted, and not at all sounds smooth out against Zayn's skin. Silent pleas and claims for this to be okay, for them to be okay. They seep through Zayn's skin, right to when he can't tackle them away anymore; presses Louis flat against the nearest wall, and smacks their lips together in despair.
Louis's fingers thread through Zayn's dark hair, bites his lips and rasp against Zayn's frame. He swallows down the groan leaving Zayn's throat, and Zayn's breathing hard and fast and his lungs cling to his chest, too fast, too soon and air is a problem but so is Louis right now. He tries to catch his breath when Louis pushes and prods him against the adjoining door.
"Fuck, Zayn," He breathes, against Zayn's skin, drags his fingers against his side. "Do you trust me?"
And Zayn doesn't respond, because really, Louis should have it all figured out by now. Zayn picks his head up and kisses him, and Louis sighs into his mouth in relief, desperately sinking his teeth into Zayn's bottom lip. And Louis knows, but he asks because Zayn's breakable bones and fervour, and he doesn't want to do this to him.
"Buzzing." he says against Louis's lips, "buzzing,"
Louis laughs, rests his hands on Zayn's chest and he's smirking, hitching Zayn's shirt up and catching Zayn's glazed look with his own, misted over with want.
Zayn’s head tips back, and he tries to catch his breathe but it's a resigned hope when Louis's in the same room, or of all, Louis up and against him the way he is now. Louis rips the rest of their clothes off, fucks them against the stall door. Fucks them breathless and needy and there's teeth and claws and intimate susurration and slurs.
Then Louis's pulling his pants up, and he's too fast for Zayn to keep up to, because they're outside in the crisp night air again in seconds, hooting at passerby's and laughing without a care. "We need to get back," Zayn says among the laughter, "tomorrow there's t-tom-" Louis dries up his words with a teasing kiss, and they sink down at the wet and dainty stairs of the building, stringing their fingers around each other and smiling.
Zayn's tugging him up towards an tattoo lock-up.
"Really, Z? Be a little less predictable, at least."
"Why? you see through me anyways,"
Zayn props down in a chair, folds out a paper Louis didn't know he kept in his pockets all along. It's a thin tracing of words, that he saw Zayn scribbling out many many times, but he doesn't ask what it is. Zayn's tattoos are always cryptic and personal and they're his only way with words, so Louis doesn't ask, just lets them sly out against his skin in hushed whispers when Zayn needs them to be.
And Louis knows Zayn doesn't mind the pain and sting as the needle scrape his skin, but his fingers curl around Zayn's because that where it feels right.
They stumble out of the shop an hour or so later, "We need, like, money," Louis slurs, "We've used up all our money." And for once, Zayn's laughing when Louis's being pensive because this whole ordeal didn't even occur to him possible. "Z, it's not," but he's laughing along. "not funny," he frowns at Zayn then, "we can't get back,"
Zayn groans, because there really isn't anything they can do at this point except maybe find a decently pleasant place to stretch out in till the sun comes up.
"Your phone," Louis cries a while later. "Harry'll pick us up,"
"Oh," of course, Harry. Zayn pulls out his phone, and it's glaring against the darkness of the night and their faces. There're many texts and calls and most of all are from Liam and all Zayn wants is to call Harry right now even though the sensible thing to do is call Liam. But Liam's all worried looks and scolding, and none of them can deal with it right now.
They spend the time (a long time, at that) waiting for Harry, pressed up against each other, convulsed with laugher and hands secured around each other. Harry brings Niall, which is probably a good idea; having to haul both their woozy weights into the back of the car.
They hardly keep their hands off of each other in the back seat, which they don't know who's idea was it. But it's a pretty great goddamn idea. And there's Chris Martin's singing filling up the car, conveying their perception.
Niall and Harry bring them back to their apartment, call Liam to tell him they've got back alright, and don't leave until they've tucked them both into bed. (which is a struggle when none wants to go the fuck to sleep at it.) They lay close that they're fleshes melt into one, subdued breaths and murmur of words pressed against their blazing skin. That's where it feels right; hands clasped around each other and bodies ravelled.
In the morning, Louis spills out of the door and Zayn feels the bed rise with the missing weight of Louis pressed up against him, but he stays in bed for as long as he can, hangs on the frail whim of Louis walking back and climbing in and never, ever leaving his side.