ocean sequence: running on my mind boy, forrest gump (1/3)
ocean sequence
title: running on my mind boy, forrest gump
pairing: liam/zayn, harry/louis
rating: r
warning: au, language, drug abuse, angst, infidelity, religion, depression
word count: 12,530
note: this is the third segment. here are links for part one and part two.
a/n: i know that you guys are thinking finally! and i am too! i have been working on this part for the better part of three months and it’s so good to finally share it with you guys. it’s always hard getting into the groove of things but i hope that my style hasn’t slipped over time. credit to authors that inspired me: nabokov, siken, fitzgerald, bianca stewart, susan musgrave, paul eluard, andrea gibsons’ ‘the madness vase’ is quoted, along with parts of the bible specifically ‘genesis’ and ‘gospel of john’, the very last part of this chapter is by stickyeyelids, and sciencesoup's 'the moving perspective, and the parts of ‘how to fill the spaces where love used to live’ is inspired by littlebirdsings on tumblr, also bluewhitney’s ‘the company we keep’, and shadowboxerbaby’s ‘backstreet to heaven’. if you’re looking for song recommendations, i suggest for this part, joe strummer’s ‘mondo bongo’, especially for the latter half. lastly, thank you so much for all the readers that have tweeted and sent me messages and tumblr-ed me, all your encouragement is so so greatly appreciated, you have no idea, and i thank you all for giving me the will to trek on. this is your kingdom, and if you are new to the series, welcome.
“the cure for anything is salt water - tears, sweat, or the sea.” - isak dinesen
--
heaven is a common religious, cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit.
where eventually all heavenly beings will return to.
it is commonly believed that heavenly beings can descend to earth or take on earthly flesh - like artemis as a deer or zeus as a mortal man to escape the duties of mount olympus. and that earthly being can ascend to heaven in the afterlife - as christ had done after walking across the desert carrying the cross of human suffering.
or in exceptional cases, enter heaven alive - like dante in the divine comedy in his journey to explore the spiritual world.
heaven is often described as a ‘higher place’, the holiest place, a paradise, and universally but conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards: divinity, piety, faith, virtues, goodness.
in islamic culture, the qur’an contains many references to an afterlife for those who do good deeds. muslims believe that all men were born pure and it’s the deeds in life that condemns oneself. if a life of sin outweigh the good, then one gets sent to hell. if a life of good deeds outweigh the bad, then one gets to go to jannah.
those who dwell in heaven wear clothes spun from silk and everything is made of gold.
the sun never sets in heaven but one can still see the stars.
zayn malik doesn’t believe in heaven.
--
“it’s 4pm on a monday: you’re not out of bed and you haven’t been coming to school so what are you doing?” the brassy orange voice belongs to niall horan, zayn’s oldest friend. zayn’s known niall since before he was born. he thinks they might’ve been reincarnated together.
“i’m taking a long weekend.”
“two weeks long?”
“leave of absence then.” zayn knows he’ll have to face formal reprimand once he goes back (if he goes back) but expulsion’ll be a long stretch. his baba’s on the school board and the horan family practically owns the school and well…niall simply won’t let them.
he’ll probably get a ‘throwing his future away’ lecture but zayn doesn’t really care - he’s never really had a future, not one without liam, at least.
he can hear niall picking his way through the mess of glass bottles, clothes, empty cigarette packs. whenever niall would pause, zayn assumes he’s found something more incriminating (maybe a bump of coke he forgot to lick off or a capsule of prescription pill or a stray syringe - he hopes it’s little blue sleeping aids; doctors call it zolpidem; harry calls them ‘little boy blue’).
zayn wonders but he really can’t be bothered with opening his eyes (or maybe he’s not supposed to).
there’s a swish and he deduces niall must’ve pulled open the curtains because there’s orange itching at his eyelids (he wants to blink but his brain commands him don’t) and a loud observation of, “holy shit, malik. it’s like somebody died in here.”
“yeah.” he finds his voice, gravelly and quiet and navy. me, he wants to say but it’s too close to the truth and niall hates it when he broods so he doesn’t.
niall sighs in dove gray, like maybe he understands but zayn thinks maybe he doesn’t. then the bed dips and niall is projecting tangerine sincerity even through closed lids, “mate…can’t bear to see you wasting away in bed all day. you’re too pretty for this, yeah?”
“yeah.” zayn agrees, lashes like a rabble of monarch mariposa, “s’pose so.”
“hey…” niall calls and zayn turns his face; towards his voice, towards the window, towards the crimson warmth. niall touches his wrist, the delicate copper skin there that’s slowly pulsing with a letter, a name. he presses his prints in. zayn flinches against the cold of niall’s family ring and tries to slip away but niall’s firm in his gestures, “this has to stop.”
a pill bottle rattles - maybe it’s round yellow painkillers; doctors call it oxycodone; harry calls them ‘yellow school bus’.
“zayn, you hear me? i don’t like this.”
niall’s one to talk. zayn remembers a time when niall used to dig his hand into a pharmacy bowl and wash down whatever comes up with a bottle of hennessy, dance well into the night, then whisk his favor-of-the-night home in his lamborghini for a good fuck. occasionally, he’d call zayn and they’d go into manchester; snort a few lines together, smoke cigars, drink scotch, and watch girls take off their clothes through a cloud of tobacco.
niall used to be young with his family’s old money.
now, niall’s money goes to bailing his brother out of jail and paying the school for liam’s scholarship - it seems like niall’s always paying for people’s freedoms. and instead of strip clubs, niall rows in his pond or boxes in his private gym.
zayn misses the old niall, having someone to gamble his future with.
“you used to love speedballing.” he reminds niall in the soft, nostalgic shade of indigo.
“that was before i saw how it could ruin a person.” niall is probably looking at the track marks on his skin that run like digital code or the scratches on his arm from itching at a phantom rash but zayn has never gotten used to having people look at him (he’s always felt like if they look too closely, they might be disappointed). he shrinks back against the feeling that niall is peeling back muscle and peering into his internal organs, prodding at places that hurt, “if liam saw you now, he’d be heartbroken.”
at this, zayn opens his eyes and there’s something wet running down his temple into his hair and oh - so that’s why he was supposed to keep them closed.
“liam…” he chokes because there’s too much ink melted into the golden word. “liam doesn’t care.”
liam doesn’t care because he’s probably too busy training for the olympics or committing to a uni or shaking hands with princess kate or posing for his nike sponsorship or getting cozy to a cute british diver.
meanwhile, zayn is falling down a bottomless pit of empty syringes, obsidian dreams, and viridian green pupils blown wide (or is it wide with blow?) and he can’t pull himself back up and nobody seems to understand why.
he wishes there were more ways to explain it besides that…he simply just can’t. that without liam as an anchor (without liam’s gentle nature, crafted build, fiery loyalty, quiet intelligence, soft smiles, calloused palms, intricate tendons, strong heartbeat), zayn can’t.
he’s built his life around liam and the letters in his name and he never left any room for himself (there’s no zayn without first having a liam). so now he can’t get a foothold on solid ground because there is nothing else.
liam took everything with him.
and he’s so lost, it baffles him.
because yes, he knows he’s a drug-hollowed mess of well-placed bone structure without liam. he knows and liam knows.
and liam left anyway.
“shut up, you twat. anything with a pulse can tell that liam loves you.” niall’s tone is steel grey.
he thinks neon running shoes, tanned eternal legs, and rhythmic breathing counting in - one, two - out - one, two - and he cringes before the memories could go any further, rasping, “he loves running more, it seems. liam is always…chasing…”
after glory, after perfection, after the zayn he wants.
there’s a soft violet sigh, then long freckled arms roping around his shoulders and suddenly his face is tucked securely in niall’s chest, tears seeping into niall’s hydrogen bones (smooth enough to slip past your fingertips, strong enough to hold up a ship). niall smells like jasmine wood and hand-rolled cigarettes and hazelnut, his fingers curled carefully into zayn’s deconstructed quiff. niall is murmuring in soft tones of fuchsia, “you think liam is too good for you and you think you don’t deserve happiness. but you do, zayn. liam loves you more than he knows how to say. you were never just a chase. you’re the prize, mate.”
zayn nods very shakily, burrowing deep into the comfort niall’s words give but the comfort also haunts him. and niall’s bright words cast shadows because what if zayn doesn’t want to be a prize?
“i’m sorry about the race, nialler.” he apologizes quietly after about a hundred heartbeat of hiding in niall’s embrace as it suddenly dawns on him that he’s not the only one suffering from loss (niall’s lost too and nobody seems to acknowledge that).
“thanks, malik.”
zayn feels the bob of niall’s adam’s apple, the way it does when he gets emotional, and feels a bit shite because he’s so invested in the name on his sleeve that sometimes he forgets about other people. so he peers up at niall’s clenched jaw then downcasts his gaze, “you know. it’s alright if you need looking after too.”
it’s true that zayn loves to wallow in his misery but he also has niall’s back, front, internal organs and zayn would give his own back, front, internal organ to keep niall safe.
if it were possible, niall’s arms tighten even further around his shoulders. niall’s mouth pressed to his temple, “i don’t need looking after. i just need you to think now and then that there is someone who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.”
zayn doesn’t know exactly what niall means but he smiles anyway because what a nice thought.
--
to push heroin, first dissolve the hydrochloric salt base in water then heat until in liquid form. second, find an accessible elastic vein. third, make a makeshift tourniquet. four, pin a hypodermic needle carefully into the bloodstream (cautious of air bubbles) and release.
upon injection, the heroin breaks down into its pharmaceutical bonds, is pumped into the heart then dispersed throughout the entire body. it travels up to the brain through the carotid artery. once the heroin crosses the blood-brain barrier, it is converted to morphine and binds rapidly to the opioid receptors, which begins a blurring effect to edge onto the frontal cortex.
this creates a surge of pleasurable sensation; a ‘rush’.
zayn likes the heroin because it gives him these…visions.
he dreams of golden arches framed with strong defined lines. of broad, exquisite shoulders that holds up the sun like a dome. of straight rivets between two blades in columns running like the nile. of lean hips like tall slender minaret towers. of lithe bow-like form curved like a mihrab wall.
of eternal legs like tanned marble columns in a mosque.
he dreamed he spoke in another’s language. he dreamed he lived in another’s skin. he dreamed he was his own beloved, that he was a tiger’s kin.
he dreamed that eden lived inside of him, and when he breathed a garden came. he dreamed a body of bones in the sense of pure architecture.
and the word ‘liam’ tastes like grace on his tongue.
zayn malik believes in prayer.
--
and it’s like this: 17 year-old zayn watches every single one of liam’s races, does liam’s washing up, wears liam’s varsity jacket, and sews the button back onto liam’s uniform shirt.
he doesn’t mind the domesticity. in fact, he cherishes it (being a part of liam’s daily mechanics). because zayn lives for liam’s rough morning voice and sweet snuffles that makes him wish he had a million miniature microphones to record the soundtrack of his morning.
he would compose liam as a whole then slip secretly into the song, between the melody and the tempo, quiet on the staff (two octaves above liam), like grace notes. and he would tell liam: ‘right next to you, lee’.
timeline: three thousand six-hundred fifty-two days after he’s first kissed liam, and zayn is waiting for liam under the very same willow tree on a flannel with berry rum and a jar of paper stars.
one star for every day of the ten years they’ve been together.
except the sun’s going down now, a chill’s starting to set in, and the bouquet of honeysuckles is starting to look sad with no tender smile and solar eyes. this probably means he’s not coming because liam is never late.
still.
zayn clenches his mobile, smokes a pack, and waits until the stars in the sky are all blinking sadly down at him.
liam’s voice sounds light and grinning like turquoise when he answers zayn’s call near midnight, “zayn?”
and zayn’s lungs ache because he’d rather liam be sleeping or boxing so zayn could find excuses to forgive him. he fists his shaky hands and tries to unfurl the hot knot caught in his chest, “hey.” then, “it’s friday.”
“i know.” liam replies with a little laugh, twinkling like coral, “that’s why i didn’t phone earlier. track practice ran overtime so i figure you’d gone out with niall by the time i finished up.”
“i didn’t.”
“yeah? what’ve you been doing then?”
zayn can hardly decide between the bitter accusation of waiting on you, you bastard because that’s all he ever seems to do and it’s our tenth year anniversary and please don’t forget this, come back but he’s more devastated than anything else. he presses on, “we were supposed to meet up. under the willow.”
“we were. and i’m screwing up. i got caught up. i’m sorry.” liam’s apologies are always honeyed in a ridiculously sincere way, “i’m ruining this, aren’t i?”
he shakes his head even though liam can’t see it and insists in a desperate azure murmur, “it’s the twenty-third.” because the date is supposed to mean something to liam; it used to, at least.
“okay?” liam’s properly confused now. zayn imagines him with sweetly crinkled brows.
“forget it. i’ve got to go.”
zayn must sound as cold and crushed as he feels because liam grows alarmed, “no. wait. you’re crossed with me. what is it?”
if he doesn’t hang up the phone soon, he might start to cry, then he would have to tell liam what’s wrong and it would just build a wall of guilt around them so it’s better if he burrows it in his ribcage, deep between the diaphragm and chambers of the heart. he blinks his eyes close and tries to think of paint and butterflies and liam’s plaid (simple, unchanging things in his life), breaths brokenly, “s’nothing. i really wanted to be with you tonight. just. in one of my moods. wanted you here.”
because zayn picked out three thousand six-hundred fifty-two stars from the milky way for liam and he has brand-new ink seeping into the carpals of his wrist. because zayn remembers their tenth year anniversary while liam’s restlessly running away on a rubber track chasing an olympic dream.
so he tells himself that the anger and sadness is just temporary and he listens to liam’s soothing apologies and confused confessions of ‘i’ll always be here, you know that’ because he loves liam best.
then in the morning, he calls doniya and he asks for her to take him to london.
part two