Chapter Text
Electric shocks the tired muscle back to life.
Too much of a favor to ask from a heart that's been pierced, squeezed and broken for most of its lonely existence.
Frightened green eyes fly wide open to the SOS of the loudly beeping machine.
They constantly come out of focus, adding cloud after cloud to the hazy white sky above.
The unbearable pain replaces the blood in his veins and he cannot function. Making a sound is out of question.
His brain is full of empty.
This emptiness is full of something dangerously heavy. A heavy that pulls him down. A heavy that is stronger than gravity. A heavy that reminds him of a head resting on his chest. A heavy that reminds him of his mother stroking his hair. A heavy that reminds him of the sound of his sister's laugh.
A heavy that reminds him of summers and blueberries. A heavy that reminds him of how young he is. A heavy that reminds him of all his dreams. A heavy that reminds him of the warmth of his body after a kiss. His lips. His eyes. Him.
A heavy that reminds him of picking flowers and reading poems and singing and feeling and simply just being.
A heavy that no matter how heavy, is so hard to let go. A heavy that's not his anymore.
He feels his grip loosening. He feels his poor heart beating lifelessly at the reminders of him. It's muscle memory after all but his heart is just a fucking fool of a muscle that doesn't understand reason, it doesn't bargain and it no longer forgives.
He feels too much all at once and then nothing at all. Soon, the borders of his skin cease to exist. At last, he hears the monotone of a sharp whistle. He becomes the emptiness. He sinks.
***
"Pinch me harder than a monkey mama pinches the flea outta baby monkey's fur!"
"The least you can do is to humanize your vocabulary when you call me in such an ungodly hour, Louis. "
"No Zayn! See, I was babbling about..."
"I refuse to open my eyes. "
"Ah I mean listen! I was telling him about..."
"Only if I could close my ears too. "
"Are you going to listen or what?"
"No, Louis. What I'm miserably failing to say is that we are closed. Shoo shoo. Bye. Talk to you in five years. "
"Don't hang up! He talked!"
"Zayn?"
A sigh comes from the other side of the line.
"Who talked?"
"Harry."
Zayn sits up in his bed and pulls out a cigarette from the box, places it between his lips and searches blindly for his lighter in the dark.
"Did you hear what I just said?! I said he talked. "
"What did he say?" The tiredness in his voice thickens as the sleep wears off.
"He said and I quote: You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave. " His delirious excitement sounds fairly contagious.
"Why were you listening to 'Hotel California ' in the middle of the night? "
"I wasn't," the blue eyed boy sighs, frustrated. "Do me a favor and hold your head under the shower so you wake up. "
Zayn puffs the smoke out and plays with his beard.
"Put him on the phone. "
"What?"
"You said he talked, right? Put him on the phone. "
"He is sleeping now, Malik. And I'm not waking him up. "
"Put. Him. On. The. Phone. "
He can hear Louis cursing and hears when the wooden floor moans under his weight. His soft voice whispers a sweet 'wakey wakey ' before the wind whistles in Zayn's ears and he listens and listens till the cigarette burns into dark ash and smoke.
***
Dear Lou,
I wish I could tiptoe my way around my head and free the curtains with two dramatically stretched arms.
My hands struggle to strangle a good remembrance.
I wasted almost all of those very dear bright starlets to make me make it through the lonesome nights.
Your rusted chain of actions is responsible for the rabidity of this brute animal I have become.
Yet, I fish through your ocean blue eyes, searching for hope somewhere in the depth of my roaming, stinking existence. The only thing I love about your deranged eyes is that they are full of what I desperately need but know better to let myself or you have it.
A shadow of what used to be my smile sends dark clotted blood to my face and your much warmer, alive lips kiss it off my pale lips thirstily.
"Tell me. " You say, my smile still on your lips.
"Tell you what? "
"Your untouchable parts. The parts that smell like sunlight and taste like the moon. "
"I'm untouchable wholly. "
Your fingers trace the air on my skin. Just as close to touch the tip of the raised hair of my arm.
Teasing yourself while torturing me, wait for the tables to turn unfairly. It'll be torture for both of us, lover.
"Are you?" You whisper like you're scared I may hear it. The long lived smile trembles slightly before fading.
"I am. "
You chuckle. Simply but terrifyingly.
"Lou. "
"No, I know what you want to say. I don't want to hear it. "
"It's time, Lou. "
You shake your head and look away from me like I'm actually there. Like I can see you avoiding me. It's all you, Lou. It's all you and your eyes.
"Lou. " My long gone voice shakes, even in your mind. Deep down, even you know.
"No. "
"I died, Lou. "
"Shut up."
"I'm so sorry I left you alone, but I died that night, Lou. "
"Shut up! I liked you a whole lot better when you were mute. "
"Let go, Lou. Let me go. "
You cover your ears. My picture on the wall watches you as you shatter in million pieces. Your pieces fall everywhere. Into and all over the place but absolutely far from where they belong.
You wanted me to track you.
You left soul prints in all the places you went after and without me.
One in your never ending screams trapped in between cold hospital walls.
One in the image that stared back at you in the mirror you broke.
One in the yellow post-it note.
One in my diary.
One in the empty wheelchair you always carried with you.
One in the nights you chased the sun.
One in the dried bucket of sunflowers.
One in your much hated bitter black coffee.
One in the songs I never sang.
One thousand seventeen in the memories you kept revisiting.
And one in the me you kept seeing,
I was there,
For your eyes only.