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They were lucky to have made it all the way to the city, or so the conductor said, but Liam was not so sure of that. He stepped off on to the dingy platform, billows of steam emanating from the broken engine. He wiped his palms on his gray suit jacket and headed for the station proper, suitcase in hand.
Not much had changed in the three years since he left. The station appeared the same now as it had then, except for maybe the McDonald's that now sat in the space that used to be a clothing store. He knew that once he set foot outside of this building, the city he knew no longer existed. It was an odd to sense a sort of transition zone between the past and present, and some part of his heart irrationally clung to the former, a world he knew before he took a train heading west so long ago, not knowing if he would ever see his old life again.
Entering witness protection meant having to fall off the face of the earth, severing ties, leaving people to wonder and worry about where you are, whether or not you are alive, and, when the reason you have gone into hiding to begin with is gone, trying to come back before they have forgotten about you entirely.
He had no idea what to expect outside the door. Not many people did or could understand how any of this worked, least of all him.
He bought a ticket to the metro and took the line to a place north of the city. At least for a little while, he could maintain a temporal cocoon and prevent the present from crashing in all at once. A few passengers eyed his formal style, a chic gray flower in a bed of weeds, and he felt unnecessarily self-conscious. But, he supposed the attention was deserved. Today was a big day.
Many stops later, he hopped off and walked the block to a hotel, at which he had made a reservation months ago, on the day he could finally leave his new life behind and return to his old one. He went up to his room, dropped off his sole piece of luggage, and headed right back out with the bare necessities.
He sneaked a glance at his watch and saw that he had at least an hour before it started. Taking the taxi would take fifteen minutes and finding him would take at least ten. And maybe thirty-five minutes would be enough to change his mind.
The taxi took twenty minutes and twenty quid. He paid and hurried in to the chapel. He glided past person after person, each dressed just as formally, but none really took notice of his presence, and he preferred it that way. He ignored the fact that he had, in a way, become unrecognizable to these people because he only needed the recognition of one.
Liam did, however, stop and ask one guest where the people of the hour were, and they kindly directed him to a secluded room. He checked his watch. Twenty-five minutes.
He raised and set his knuckles against the thin, white door. The force of his heart could have knocked for him. Liam took a couple of breaths and slowly knocked three times.
A muffled, "Come in" reached his ears. Fear tinted every thought he had. He gripped the knob with sweaty palms and pushed the door open with such little effort it only added to the anxiety. There he sat on a chaise in a sharp black suit, with his back to the door, hair still gelled in his signature quiff after these years, hunched over and staring at nothing in particular. Liam quietly shut the door behind him.
"Hi, there," he let out.
For a second, the groom froze. Then, he snorted, lowering his head in disbelief. He tilted his head up as slowly as he could, as if refusing to believe he recognized the voice which greeted him.
"Liam. You're alive," Zayn whispered, voice cracked, his eyes meeting the warm brown ones looking back.
"I was never dead," he responded.
At that, Zayn stood up, and after a short pause, he took a few steps toward the living person by the door. Liam fell back, the punch landing solidly on his jaw. He managed to catch himself against the doorjamb and as much as he didn't expect that to happen, he knew he deserved such a greeting.
Pure anger flowed through Zayn's blood and it held back the tears that would have otherwise appeared by now.
"You're a real bastard," Zayn hissed, staring at the man on the floor.
"I- I'm sorry."
"Sorry?! Do you have any idea what you put everyone through?! What you put me through? I just- I waited so long. Even when everyone tried to convince me that you were gone, lost, dead... I held out hope. For two years. Two fucking long years. And then I just-"
"Witness protection," he cut off, standing back up, "I was in witness protection. If I stayed, then I'd have put everyone in danger."
That stymied Zayn into an undecipherable silence. He sat back down and ran his hands through his quiff, messing the delicate shape. Liam squatted down, trying to meet Zayn's eyes.
"I waited, too, you know. I'm still waiting," Liam said.
Zayn bolted up and walked behind the chaise, using it as a boundary between them.
"You can't do that. You can't just come back here and expect me to happily pick up where we left off."
Liam nodded numbly and admitted, "I know that. I kind of hoped in some alternate universe, we could."
The door cracked open before he could finish another thought, and an unfamiliar face popped through. She informed Zayn that it was time. Zayn nodded. Liam took that as a cue to find his seat in the congregation. He sat in the back and waited for Zayn to walk down the aisle looking prim and proper for the biggest day of his life thus far.
Only, the groom never showed. They all waited and waited, and from the hallway, Liam heard a tearful Perrie excuse herself. After the announcement came that the groom had gone missing, the guests evacuated the disaster zone, all the while murmuring to each other what had happened.
A gut instinct told Liam that he knew exactly where Zayn was. He hailed a taxi and directed the driver to a suburb.
Minutes later, they arrived at an old apartment complex. He walked up the stairs to the third floor, the taxi's engine growling softly as it drove off in the distance, and saw the open door. A breeze blew by, tugging at his suit, and he entered.
Time left a healthy layer of dust on just about everything. This was their apartment, their home, their retreat from the outside world. His heart brimming with painful nostalgia, he trotted to the bedroom in the back, and let out a sigh when he saw Zayn laying on the bed, sprawled out on the dusty sheets. His jacket and tie hung on the unplugged lamp. The overcast day came through the windows and lit Zayn's lower half, dimly revealing his face.
Liam stood by the door and shared the silence. He remembered many days like this, when Zayn would come home utterly exhausted, splaying across the bed like he did now, and Liam would slip in next to him.
"I'm surprised you still pay the rent for this," Liam whispered.
"Yeah, well. I told you I waited."
More silence.
"Am I making a mistake?" Zayn asked.
Liam sighed and sat down, giving the mattress a taste of his weight. He said, "I want to say 'no', but I'd be lying if I didn't say it was for selfish reasons."
"What are we now, even? Is there still an 'us'?" Zayn asked, eyes tracing lines on the ceiling.
If only Liam knew the answer to that.
"You know, I understand if you go back. Perrie's a nice woman. She's so lucky to have you," Liam said.
"Maybe. But it should always have been you standing across from me."
Liam shuffled back on the bed and sat next to Zayn. He bent over and pressed a tender, chaste kiss on Zayn's lips, and to his pleasant surprise, Zayn pressed back with a longing deep from his soul. Liam wondered if Zayn missed the lingering tingle the moment their lips parted, if he missed it for over a thousand days, if it were the last kiss he would get to miss.
"What do we do?" Liam asked.
"You're asking the wrong person."
They lay next to each other for what seemed like eternity, pondering the possibilities of years lost. They were paralyzed by a question in the present, a love trapped in the past, and entirely blocked from the future without an answer.
Once again, Liam was in his bubble, hoping that this was something he could still hold on to, when everything else had fallen away.
"I'm going to get some air," Zayn said, or rather, announced.
Liam nodded, and somewhere within, he knew his bubble had deflated. He watched as Zayn disappeared from view, his footsteps fading the further he walked, and then Liam remembered the last thing he told Zayn before he left this apartment so many years ago.