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“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.
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.
harry styles is all devilish curls and cherry red mouth and green. no boy has ever looked less like liam.
and what it was is magnetism: longing for the half of themselves they have lost.
so zayn buys harry a drink and harry shares his hydrocodone (orange straitjackets) and they tumble into the same bed at the end of the night riding out a rush on each other’s hips. it was strange for zayn – feeling his way around somebody’s body.
harry is too pretty of a creature that’s wiry in form and moves slinky. his skin is pale like moonlight, his hands rove like asteroids, and he has a whole galaxy in his starry eyes. harry’s strong, not in muscle or weight, but by the sheer massiveness of his diamond skeleton.
but harry’s gravity doesn’t intimidate zayn. it’s neither a burden nor a pressure. harry has the strange ability of being able to fold himself around zayn, joints and tissues interlocking protectively into a cage of cosmic bones.
it’s heavy compassion. not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
harry loves zayn for it, the mutual agony, and he keeps zayn in his big hollow ribcage like a new heart.
“where’re you from?” the cream sheets are pooled around harry’s lavender hips, his face is pink and his nose white. stunning.
he blows out a puff of smoke with his quiet response, “bradford.”
“why’d you leave?” harry inquires with a subtle knowing tilt of his head, irises sparkling comets.
“problems with a bloke.” he tries for nonchalant despite all the cartilages in his hands twitching in protest.
harry quirks an elegant brow and swipes his floppy fringe off to the side. harry’s got a beautiful young face, fresh raspberry mouth, but harry’s perhaps the wisest of them all (wiser than niall). harry has been bent and broken, and zayn thinks, into better shape.
“boyfriend?”
zayn thinks bronze muscles twisted like syntax in a poem and how maybe he even loved him before he saw him and every atom he’s composed of is held together by liam’s sunlight.
zayn malik believes in soulmates.
“something like that.” zayn says because that’s easier than explaining everything liam encompasses (liam is flesh of his flesh; bone of his bone) and harry nods in accession because that’s easier than prying the delicate flower roots out from his sternum so zayn leans over and kisses him gratefully. their wet mouths slide over each other and zayn tastes vodka, money, and an overwhelming amount of grief off harry’s soft tongue.
(or maybe that’s just the ecstasy).
he murmurs gently against harry’s temple, hand on harry’s cock, “you love someone, don’t you?”
“yes.”
“how do you leave someone you love?” zayn questions because harry is lovely and should not be so lonely, eyes lidded as harry presses him to the mattress.
harry’s husky voice is stern, “ ‘i don’t love you anymore. goodbye.’ it’s the only way to leave.”
zayn thinks that doesn’t sound quite right but his head is starting to grow fuzzy and harry’s skin feels gorgeous against his, “supposing you do still love them?”
“you don’t leave.”
“you’ve never left someone you still love?”
this then is harry’s story. people’s paid harry for it. it has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful green flies. harry’s ribcage echoes ibiza and at the pull of the oceanic tide, zayn feels his slippery mind eluding from himself, gliding into deeper and darker waters than he’d care to probe.
“nope.”
it is in this moment – the haze of bright stars behind their eyelids, the tingle, the flame, the honeydew, the ache that still remain with him – in this mimosa grove, that darling harry styles with his seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted zayn ever since.
what does space smell like?
it’s strange to think that the near-vacuum of space could have a smell and it’s even strange that humans – atmospheric creatures – can actually experience it.
nonetheless, research has discovered that astronauts have consistently reported the same ubiquitous odor after length space walks, bringing it back with them on their suits, helmets, gloves and tools. since then, chemists have been attempting to reproduce the scent during acclimatization training.
it’s a bitter, smoky, metallic smell – like seared flesh, hot metal, and arc welding smoke all meld into one. it is believed that the smell is caused by high-energy vibrations in particles that mix with the air and oxygen when contained to earth’s stratosphere.
(harry styles is now).
given the right chemical information, it’s possible to recreate the smell of saturn, jupiter, the sun or any place in the universe. even the fragrance of the heart of the galaxy – astronomers are searching for amino acids in sagittarius b2, a vast dust cloud in the middle of the milky way, and have come upon ethyl formate, which smells and tastes sweet and soft; raspberries and rum.
(liam payne comes later).
and this is why zayn loves harry:
once zayn woke up from a deep morphine sleep with his lashes tangled and he’d fluttered them wetly to try to loosen them like wings. he dreamt that he was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes of a butterfly, and flew freely without care about humanity, conscious only of his happiness as a butterfly.
but then he woke and he was invariably zayn, solid and trapped and sad, and zayn did not know was he before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly or is he now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?
between him and the butterfly, here must be a difference; an instance of transformation.
he tells harry as much and harry just kisses him silent with his soft mouth and electric tongue and he forgets all about it once the amphetamines hit his bloodstream.
the night before zayn’s 18th birthday, harry brings him to his present on the balcony of his flat. they sit on the floor, legs poking out through the gap of the railings, light cigarettes, then harry moves the underbrush of a patch of sunflowers and zayn stuns at the sight of the chrysalis anchored at the stalk of the plant.
“ – is that…” zayn gapes.
harry’s smile is laced with affection, “it is.”
he shakes his head in disbelief, “h-how…how did you – i – when?”
“anytime now.” answers harry confidently.
so they sit quietly for the next hour – zayn’s skin feels heavy like he might be molting as well – until the chrysalis starts to break and he gasps the first moment he saw the delicate pupal wings that had gone through rapid mitosis slice through the paper cocoon. the body stretches and the feelers extend, the scales on the wings gleaming, dusted with shimmery powder.
a sweet little lavender butterfly (gossamer-winged lycaenidae).
it’s vulnerable and just emerged. it needs to spend time waiting for its pastel paint to dry, fanning them in slow new motions, filling the veins in the wings before it could fly.
“it’s a palos verdes.” harry says, owl green eyes never leaving zayn. his big pretty face curious and fond and desirous, a supernova compressed into diamond clavicles and opalescent hands.
“why?” the gossamer creature is bleeding excess dye; wet indigo acrylic slick on his fingertips when he reaches out tentatively to feel the fragile slender wings. harry reaches to expertly pluck the butterfly into a nearby jar, getting smears of blue on the glass.
“because i have a tender spot in my heart for cheaters and bastards and broken things.”
he repeats his question, because that’s not the truth, “why?”
he blinks and when harry blinks back, all his electrons are charged, his mouth cherry-sweet with popsicle dimples, “so you can have your instance of transformation.”
the two sweetest pleasures zayn has known to man is drugs and butterflies. and harry styles gave him both.
(in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth).
okay so it’s 5am.
zayn asks himself: do you know where you are?
the club is either antik or j’adore. all might come clear if he could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more bolivian marching powder. then again, it might not. a firm marigold voice (irish lilted) inside him insists that this blatant lack of clarity is a result of too much of that already.
“zayn.” so maybe zayn doesn’t know the exact location but he’s in a nightclub talking to harry styles. and harry is staring at him with quite fond, big andromeda green eyes, “zayn, do you know where you are?”
the night has already turned on that imperceptible pivot where 2am changes to 5am and zayn can’t figure out where the hell the time has all gone.
“where am i?”
harry flips his bangs, laughs once, then goes back to his fruity drink, “lizard lounge.”
“oh.” somewhere back around maybe an hour ago, he knew he should’ve cut his losses, but he rode past that moment on a new comet trail of white powder and now he is trying to hang on to the rush.
“and you know who else is here?”
his brain at the moment is composed of tiny bolivian soldiers. they’re muddy and tired from their long march through the night. there are holes in their boots and they are hungry. they need more white powder, but zayn is not yet willing to concede that he has crossed the line beyond gratuitous damage and into unraveled nerve-ending addiction.
“who, har-reh?” his tongue doesn’t work right and his pitch is high.
harry smirks, bemused, “you know who.”
(and god said, ‘let there be light,’ and there was light).
he peers up through his lashes and indeed in his golden glory is the elegant column spire of antelope legs and sculpted shoulders and curvy spine. the lithe coil of liam payne in a bronze twist not ten feet from him.
this kicks the bolivian soldiers up to their feet and for a second, zayn thinks he might vomit a flutter of brush-footed skippers. and it’s like pressing fast forward on a remote because the frames skip and when he hits ‘play’ again he’s holding liam’s adonis jaw in clammy palms and liam’s so worn and molten and so boy.
(liam is flesh of his flesh; bone of his bone).
he clings to liam like a rope to the stars, “oh god. oh god. what did you do? what did you do?”
liam stares back at zayn, blinking peach doe-eyes and pouting with his plum mouth but zayn thinks he’s looking but not recognizing, grasping hard at the cosmic space that zayn has dissolved into, and it’s then that an elastic synapse snaps somewhere in his hypothalamus, between lilac dendrites and inky myelin sheaths: they are not liamandzayn anymore.
(liam is called ‘liam’, for he is taken out of ‘zayn’).
somewhere along the way of ivory poison, forgotten dates, and too much silence, their portmanteau has deteriorated and frayed into:
liam.
zayn.
he can hardly imagine it; he didn’t dare.
(and the lord god commanded, ‘you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die’).
“relax, darling.” harry’s svelte figure materializes by his side, perpetually fluid and crystalline. zayn’s spine is stiff, his neck is burning from harry’s icy green fire and harry smirks because he knows. “looks like he’s just having a bit of fun.”
“shut. up.” zayn snaps. he imagines this must be what guilt tastes like; like moonshine or comet dust caught in his bronchioles. and harry smolders quietly because he knows.
“let’s get you some air, yeah lee?” zayn takes liam – softly and with a certain velvet reverence – by the arm and closes his palm around the worn familiarity of liam’s bronze skin. liam is always sweltering; burning hot like the surface of the sun.
zayn relishes it. he hopes liam leaves a mark.
(now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the lord god had made).
harry styles and his liquid bones, eyes thinned and lashes fanned tantalizingly, is smiling with his crimson mouth, his pink tongue. long, moon fingers curling like a crescent, pressing down on zayn like gravity. his voice is candy-apple sweet, “don’t take too long. i’ve got shots lined up.”
(‘you will certainly not die’, said the serpent, ‘for god knows that when you eat from the garden your eyes will be opened, and you will be like god, knowing good and evil’).
harry styles wears temptation well, as he was born to do, obscene and glittering. and zayn can’t bear to look at him as he exits the lizard’s eden with a white-nosed liam and the weight of sin that sits too heavy on his chest.
“why did you come?”
“why else but for you?”
outside, the wind is cold and liam is heavy (as expected, filled with so much heat and tragic goodness). the pulse of liam’s wrists is strong and zayn breathes because for god’s sake and his lungs open and there’s the sharp twinge of pain in his side where zayn imagines his missing rib is because –
so he says, quiet and aching, quietly aching, blues and violets in a voice like a bruise, “you shouldn’t have.” for liam is too lovely to know sadness or secret or sin and everything up until this point they had been writing it off as speculation and a shadow of the ventricular (an arrhythmia) but now that they’ve bitten the apple of knowledge and discovered light and evil.
the heart is corroding.
they’ve played god with their fates and now they can no longer live forever.
“i was – ” liam’s melted gaze is searching, amber and simmer. he worries his lip and his canary voice is delicate, “i am…trying to understand.”
zayn wonders if it’s really possible to tell someone else what one feels. he thinks of harry and their magnetic compassion.
“you won’t.” he swallows a sob, “you can’t. how could you possibly – ” liam couldn’t understand what it’s like to stand on the sidelines or what it’s like to be the one people look at and think what a shame but at least he’s pretty or what it’s like to have to compete for someone’s attention against the rest of the world.
liam couldn’t understand waiting; he’s too busy running.
while zayn – well, zayn has been waiting for liam, on liam, all his life.
“it’s my burden.” this then, is the chain zayn has forged, link-by-link with every red-hot doubt and striking insecurity and iron guilt. his voice is frayed, unraveled at the seams, “s’not yours to bear.”
liam’s chain is not made of the same material (it’s jagged glory and blistering duty and cold ignorance). he could not wear it for zayn, however much he tries, “but i am bearing it, aren’t i? i just don’t know what it is.”
“i know it hurts.” the way it hurts to spend a tenth-year anniversary alone. or the way it hurts to smile at admirers when his date is a no-show at his exhibition at the tate. the way it hurts to have a bouquet of lavender by his hospital bed instead of his fucking boyfriend on a track-meet weekend – the doctors took out his appendix but zayn had felt empty all over. “but that’s just the way love is.”
and here’s what they’ve been waiting for, the repeated image of lovers destroyed:
“go home.” he prays, murmuring grace into aurous skin, “please, liam.”
“come with me.” okay so it’s 6 am and zayn asks himself: do you know what you want?
(liam’s gentle nature, crafted build, fiery loyalty, quiet intelligence, soft smiles, calloused palms, intricate tendons, strong heartbeat)?
no, he doesn’t want comfort – maybe that’s the bolivian soldiers speaking or maybe it’s the butterflies. and truth is he would like his money’s worth: a voice fine and gravelly like comet rocks. devil curls and daring hands and diamond bones.
zayn wants god. he wants poetry, he wants danger, he wants freedom, he wants anger, he wants sin.
it’s liam that’s chosen knowledge, liam that’s carved from zayn’s rib. zayn supposes this is why he’s always known liam was meant for him and that there’s a part of him in liam he’ll never get back and why he’s always felt breathless with and without liam. liam looks very sad, but not sad enough, and zayn is out of body parts to give.
this is where the evening splits in half, love or not.
zayn steps away, trying not to look long at liam, as if he were the sun, yet he saw liam, like the sun, even without looking.
(and the lord god commanded, ‘for dust you are and to dust you will return’).
zayn malik believes in genesis.
“you said you’ve never left someone you still love. why?” zayn asks the moment he’s back in the lizard lounge and finds harry’s feline silhouette slouched in a booth among sniffling strangers.
harry flutters his lush moonlit eyes, like a spiral galaxy turning, and puts down his mobile. he responds slowly with a curious tilt of his head, “because we’ve both sacrificed something unspeakable for each other.”
and zayn knows the story, the whispered rumor of louis tomlinson’s creation of the universe, but he needs to hear about harry’s loss from harry himself, “which is?”
harry’s gaze is searching, roaming over zayn’s quivering arms and desperate brows. zayn thinks he sees concern in harry’s pretty starry face when he stands, unfolding his reedy limbs and pushing aside his floppy fringe, “we should go.”
“yeah.”
harry moves much like how he speaks, languid but with purpose, a slow fluid figure of creamy skin and gorgeous mouth, his planetary hand steady on the orbit of zayn’s back. when they get out onto the curb, harry is searching again, the muted understanding bright in his nebulous irises, saturated in wet luminous green. and when harry drapes his coat over zayn’s delicate shoulders, zayn knows he’s saying: i’m sorry about the ache in your bones. i wish it were mine.
the valet pulls up a sleek racecar with doors that slide up like zayn’s precious lavender palos verdes and harry claims the keys. they step in, harry blasts the heat and they split a little yellow tablet, “where to, darling?”
this isn’t their car.
zayn rests his forehead against the tinted glass of the window, watching two tanned, golden forms climb into an orange volks. the sky’s velveteen which means the sun’s going to rise soon and zayn doesn’t want the night to end because the morning means reality so he tells harry, “chase after the stars.”
and this isn’t their car.
wanted, wanted: harry styles. hair: brown. lips: scarlet. age: six thousand five hundred days. profession: none, or ‘starlet’.
they go ninety give-or-take down the a41, the scenery a mossy blur and the concrete rolling beneath their feet. zayn watches the rain run on the windshield, starting a little when he feels a cool palm press against the back of his hand over the console. harry’s closes his ruined knuckles around zayn’s and zayn can feel his fortune lines – heroic love and tragic fate and broken life.
harry just keeps his hand there, neither lacing their fingers nor counting zayn’s bones; a reassuring weight on zayn’s too-flighty being. zayn looks to him and harry blinks back, constellation eyes endless and wild like the road in front of them.
“where to, darling?” harry repeats as a fork in the road comes up, his husky drawl soft but verdant. if they take the m62, zayn could be back in bradford and the sidelines in three hours. if they stay on the a41, they will loop back to london, city and glass and paradise.
in – one, two – out – one, two –
zayn’s not a runner but maybe he should try it, “not too far.”
“what’s too far?”
“where you are.” he murmurs, fond. the shades of harry’s movements when the wind washes the morning’s rays from his seaside arms to his big pale face are feathery shadows against the sharp mishaps of his skin. his andromeda body like a painted hymn of oiled blush and acrylic greens.
in that drunken place, he would like to hand his heart to harry and say: touch it – but then give it back.
“pull over.” he says as they’re routed onto a long stretch of pasture road. harry obliges, shutting off the lights, the only resonating sound the high from the ecstasy rushing in their ears. during three hundred heartbeats, zayn pushes down the window for the taste of the rain on his skin, harry lights a cigarette, and they sit together in nuclear silence.
another hundred heartbeats go by.
“i have his money and he has my soul.” harry murmurs into the unfinished arc of sunrise. zayn shifts dazedly in response as he waits for harry to continue. harry has a whimsical, wandering way of speaking, a tendency of starting sentences that end up nowhere. “you asked why i never left…why i can’t…we didn’t make this deal with caroline. i sold my soul to louis and he traded his money for me. yes, there was deception and there was betrayal but in the end, this was me and louis’s deal; we did this to each other, then to make ourselves feel better, we say it was for each other. i never left louis, the greedy bastard, because – well, where would i go?”
harry smiles in the sunlight but resembles the moon. he leaves the same impression of something gorgeous, yet annihilating.
zayn feels harry’s loss like the space between breaths. so he reaches over to grab harry’s pretty steel jaw (because harry is forged with titanium) with his rain-slicked hands (and zayn’s mother always said he was sculpted from water) and he catches harry’s berry mouth with his, “would you please please please please please please please stop talking?”
he presses harry’s tall, slender figure into the leather and holds onto harry’s hips with skeleton-key fingers and whispers with a voice like ink from memory, “personne ne m’aime et j’ai les mains froides.”
nobody loves me and my hands are cold.
zayn’s not a runner but he tries it for a night and he thinks maybe something is only yours when you can do as you please with it.
my mother once told me that everyone has their own star. i’ve always believed her because i think you must’ve been born in the heart of my star, in a brilliant white furnace that burned and trembled and dazzled the darkness.
every atom in your body was cooked in a stellar crucible as dense as fifty nialls crammed inside a thimble, and then, as its world raged and shook, my star tore open it’s own heart for you, exploding suicidal atoms far across the oceans of the universe – atoms that came to reside in you.
what’s left of me – a vast cloud of stellar gas and dust – formed the sun and the planets swirling around it over billions of years, radiating and watching over the rocky world you reside in, where you are encased in the blue skin of its atmosphere.
and you’re moving faster than you could’ve ever imagined.
the earth beneath your feet is spinning at 1,600 km/h, the planet is hurtling towards the sun at 107,500 km/h, the sun is moving towards vega at 70,000 km/h, the orion arm of our spiral galaxy is rotating at 900,000 km/h, and the milky way is heading for the andromeda galaxy at 3,600,000 km/h.
but still here you are – a lovely collection of atoms, a perfect composition of organic molecules, a child of the stars themselves.
you are my universe. every stardust of you. and in a hundred billion galaxies, there is not another like you.
slipped under the maliks’ door the day before liam leaves for the olympic opening ceremony. the envelope reads: l to z (the 10th year).
it’s 2pm on a thursday: zayn’s not out of bed, he hasn’t been going to school, and he still can’t see a future worth living without liam in it.
he can hear someone picking their way through the mess of glass bottles, clothes, empty cigarette packs. whenever they would pause, zayn assumes they’ve found 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, he could do without the visions for a night.
his eyelids burn with the clementine glory of the afternoon. he’s careful to keep them shut this time, his sheets that still smell of grass and woodsy cologne pulled up his chest. from beside him, his sweet mariposa is resting in its jar, staring sadly down at him.
the bed dips and zayn senses from the proximity that it’s not niall. niall is loud, brash, and always sits too close. a hand cards into his hair, touch gentle, hesitant even. zayn turns onto his side and blinks open his eyes, “baba.”
zayn takes after his father in general appearance, the same poignant nose, high-set cheeks, and russet complexion but on a more significant level, he has tricia’s coy eyes, flowery lashes, and fine, fine bones. for this reason, zayn thinks, yaser malik has never allowed himself to get too close. zayn thinks he reminds his baba too much of her and what she had left behind.
“your sisters are worried. waliyha says you haven’t eaten in three days.”
zayn curls into himself, “m’fine.”
when his baba speaks again, his gaze is fixated on zayn’s pretty butterfly, “this could be good for you...liam – ” the blindsided hit that strikes zayn’s chest is actually astounding. he cringes but his baba carries on, “you were too dependent on him. what was his was yours – his dreams, his aspirations, his ambitions but what was yours was still yours – your pain, your loneliness, your grief. you never shared everything with liam, you were always afraid he wouldn’t…couldn’t…love everything. you held onto those parts of yourself and they’re monsters. they’re suppressed with affection and attention; they grow when they’re starved.”
“baba, please…” zayn pleads, his insides feeling like they’re folding, but his father looks determined in a way zayn has never seen before.
“liam was good for you. but he’s not the only good thing about you, zayn.” there’s something wistful in his baba’s eyes and his voice softens, “love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. it’s like a religion.”
and it’s a bad religion.
his voice catches, swallowed by shallow heaves and ripping sobs, “i just – don’t know…how i could be – without him.” he shakes his head, wraps his arms tight around his middle like he might come apart.
“you’re very young, my son.” and suddenly his father looks ancient, his sad smile deepening the wrinkles around his mouth. “here is the world. wonderful and terrible things will happen. don’t be afraid. experience solitude. find tranquility, my son; the way i’ve never been able to.”
this then is baba’s story. with a wife he loved too much that had felt too trapped and when she left he helped her pack her bags. he could not ask for her to stay when he knew she was unhappy and as she departed, she took all of him with her.
he kisses zayn’s hair, stands and walks with weighted tiredness. it’s time that his father retreats back into his study; zayn’s eyes still haunt him after all these years. he pauses by the dresser to place a letter atop, “the prophet muhammad said: when a thing disturbs the peace of your heart, give it up.”
timeline: sunday at noon.
zayn is sitting on a park bench in primrose hill overlooking into the streets. he’s stopped painting as of late and have taken up sketching in its stead.
buildings. he has been sketching buildings. and primrose hill is good for variety. it’s far out that there are still old artforms but close enough that it overlooks into downtown.
zayn finds that beauty in the european sense has a premeditated quality to it; with an aesthetic intention and a long-range plan. long, lean lines and tall, golden structures like a victorian cathedral or renaissance piazza.
(liam payne comes later).
meanwhile, the beauty of skyscrapers – a foreign invention – rests on a completely different base. it arose independent of human design, like a steely cavern. it’s jagged edges and sleek surfaces, quite ugly in design, but in the right setting they sparkle with a sudden wondrous poetry.
zayn was very much attracted by the alien quality of skyscrapers. he found it intriguing but frightening; it made him feel homesick for europe.
(harry styles is now).
a slinky, feline shadow looms over his sketchpad and zayn peeks up through his lashes to the twinkling green eyes of a bemused harry styles. he puts down his pencil, greets quietly, “hello, harry.”
“it’s sunday.” returns harry simply. he’s dressed in a mute gray jumper and sweet popsicle dimples. he’s carrying a small bakery bag of croissants and he’s sober and wow so this is what harry looks like properly in the sunlight. sure there subtle lavender bruises pressed under his eyes and his cheeks are drawn in by his big jaw but he looks…worn…as opposed to ruined. his skin’s creamy without the heavy contrast of darkness, not porcelain.
harry looks young, and by god, is he a stunning creature.
“it is.” zayn confirms.
harry grins cattishly, taking a seat next to zayn, picking up the butterfly jar he’s brought with him and holding it in his giant galactic hand. he asks over zayn’s shoulder, “what’re you drawing?”
shear walls in straight vertical planes, steel corners, strussed brace. he answers, “you.”
harry nods, leaning back to drape his arm across the back of the bench. the wind plays with his sleepy curls. he tilts his head back, turning his moon-and-stars face towards the sky. he announces with eyes closed, filling his lungs deeply, “i’m waiting for you.”
“to do what?”
“leave me.”
zayn pauses midstroke then after a minute closes his sketchpad. harry’s clever and zayn can tell he’s already got his armor on. he tells him, “i’m leaving you.”
“where are you going?”
“ibiza.” zayn answers and harry tenses so quickly, he sparks. harry knows what ibiza means, he knows better than anyone; it’s solitude and it’s the place where sin is shed. he could not go there, it’s the forbidden place.
harry chuckles to himself, “what a shame we all became such broken things.”
“liam broke my heart but you broke my life.”
“good. we’re stronger in the places that we’ve been broken.” harry nods, his raspy drawl steady and firm. his brows are relaxed, “who are you waiting for in ibiza?”
zayn shakes his head and his lungs bloom at the sound of the truth, “nobody. i’m not waiting for anybody.”
harry’s lips quirk. with that, he slowly unscrews the top of the mason jar and for a moment the gossamer purple butterfly just suspends there but then with a dust of lilac powder and violet wings, it’s filled its wings with lavender ink and flown out of it’s cage. it does not hesitant or linger.
harry asks then, “do you think…in another world or another life…we could’ve gone on together? do you think in that world, we would’ve been happy?”
zayn believes in other lives, in reincarnations, in other worlds, and he thinks he would’ve loved harry in all of them. but the thing is, zayn can’t imagine any world or life without liam and zayn thinks in any world or life, that’s what happiness would mean to him so he smiles very softly at harry and says, “there is another world, harry, but it’s inside this one. we are fated, i think – but never destined.”
there is a fixed natural order to the universe. what is fated, is to be unavoidable and inevitable. what is destined is with regards to the finality of events, a sense of ‘destination’.
such is the way of the cosmos.
“star-crossed.” harry murmurs with fond reverence.
zayn shrugs, “something like that.”
harry stands, straightens his constellation wide shoulders, shifting back into elusive, silken, lunar. he smirks at zayn, curved and sharp like a crescent. his voice is careless and strong, “go on then. and don’t look back, for when you do, i will have already forgotten about you.”
i don’t love you anymore. goodbye.
(in the gospel of john, jesus went unto the mount of olives, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them).
niall takes zayn to the airport, walks him through the terminal, up ‘til the walkway of the jet. it’s horan property and zayn tries to thank him for the ride but whenever he does, niall just snaps ‘shut the fuck up, malik’ so he does.
“your dad and i will talk to the school. we’ll get you on the graduation list. i’ve got a suite for you in the hotel…stay as long as you like, yeah? don’t forget to call or write once in a while, you twat.”
“thanks, nialler.”
“shut the fuck up, malik.” niall lifts his cap to ruffle through a shag of freshly dyed blonde hair. his mouth is twisted in annoyance but his wide blue eyes are burning with affection.
zayn starts, nervously, “niall, i – ”
(and the scribes brought unto him an adulterer and they say ‘the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?’).
“please watch over him. i know you will. i – i never wanted to hurt him. or you.”
niall watches zayn wring his hands, blinking blankly. then he’s yanking zayn hard towards him, throwing his tough, wiry arms around zayn’s shoulders and swearing into the crook of zayn’s neck, “christ, zayn.”
(jesus lifted up himself, and said unto them, ‘he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone’).
“now, you listen to me, you don’t worry about me or liam or anyone.” niall whispers fiercely, hands on zayn’s face and eyes blue and bright like the sea, “nobody can save you but yourself – and you’re worth saving, zayn. it’s not a war easily won but if anything is worth winning, this is it.”
(and they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, and jesus was left alone).
“don’t let the world’s dirt and dust find ways to live under your skin.” and niall presses his mouth into zayn hair. “you don’t owe anyone anything.” and niall’s spine is straight and flat and zayn knows it’s pure fire and resilience beneath. “learn to let go.”
and niall’s voice bleeds strength over the starting hum of the engine, his eyes are surprisingly soft like warm crinkled linens, “i hope you don’t come back. there’s nothing left for you here but memories and tragedy and i hope you’ll realize this.”
he kisses zayn one last time before shoving him towards the steps, “go.”
(and jesus said: go, and sin no more).
ibiza is hot.
it’s blue everywhere, the food is sweet, and the people are…happy. zayn experiences none of this the first week, holed up in his room with the curtains drawn, shuddering his way through withdrawal.
the second week, he ventures out; draws, drinks, and smokes an obscene amount.
the third week, he lights up louis tomlinson’s french cigarette by the pier and louis returns the favor by asking zayn to move in with him.
and that was that.
louis is all golden skin, crinkly eyes, and bronze sculpted hair. louis is ambition wrapped up in fame and youth and no boy has ever reminded zayn more of liam.
and what it is, zayn thinks, is companionable loneliness. being with each other didn’t stop the loneliness, just that they could be alone together.
living with louis is surprisingly easy and peaceful. he spends most of his time writing. on a typical day, he’s up in the morning before zayn, punching at his typewriter with a cigarette between his lips, chirping, “oh, there’s sleeping beauty.”
louis is pretty and flirty and so incredibly annoying that zayn has actually volunteered to run errands. then in the afternoon, zayn goes out to sketch, louis continues to write, then at night, louis makes supper and it’s good. louis preens secretly but covers it with sharp banter, “i’m convinced martha stewart stole this recipe from me. reckon i’d sue, be as rich as niall, – ”
zayn’s grin is rueful because he recognizes that biting insecurity.
after dinner, louis might make a few calls or put on some tunes or water his garden. zayn sketches more in the back porch, chain-smokes, and pretends like the gap in his chest could be filled. once or twice, he gets the shakes while he’s out and louis carries him back into his room, hands him an aspirin, sets a glass of water on the table and tells him, “one day at a time.”
over the course of the week, they slip into a comfortable groove. they go out for gelato or martinis; there’s a nice place down by the beach with a handsome bartender. one night, zayn got blackout drunk and woke up with frosted tips and swore he’d never drink with louis again. some days they just hang around the house – louis shows zayn his collection of antique typewriters (“wow, you’re even more cracked up than i am”) and louis cracks a blonde joke or two.
he could swear they’re having fun, but louis never asks ‘are you happy here?’
they’re both too haunted for that. too guilt-ridden, full of sorrow, and incomplete to really know what happiness could be when they’re missing vital organs.
zayn wakes up once, pulled from sleep by a light, repeated nudge against his ankle. notoriously bad at regaining consciousness, he groggily grunts, “hm-mm?”
“you don’t sleep naked, do you?” comes a quiet voice at the end of the bed.
“what?” it’s dark outside, which means it must still be some ungodly hour. he can barely make out the figure but it’s slender and glows with a faint tan.
“what. are. you. wearing.” the intruder persists, throwing the words at zayn’s lagging comprehension.
zayn scrubs his hand over his face, bewildered. he shifts beneath the sheets, feeling the cotton light on his skin, “i don’t – um, not much…i don’t think. i’ve got m’boxers, i think.”
an exasperated noise of annoyance. okay then, so it’s louis. he’s standing with his hands on his hip, “but you are wearing something, yes?”
“yeah. louis? is – is something wrong?”
“no.” louis deflects briskly, walking over to the vacant side of the side. he flips over a corner of the blanket and slips in beside zayn. “just go back to sleep.”
zayn is still clouded with sleep, wondering aloud, “what’s going on?”
“nothing. i’m just a hallucination from your heroin withdrawal.” louis snaps but he sounds very tired.
“oh.” he lets his head drop back onto the pillow. “that would explain it.” and closes his eyes again. next to him, the bed rustles and dips, then there’s a brief warmth of skin brushing past his calf that confirms to zayn this is definitely not a hallucination but zayn understands so he doesn’t call louis out on it.
in the morning, he wakes up to the sound of typing. there’s a fresh cup of tea on the breakfast table and louis greets him, bathed in sunlight, without looking, “you snore.”
zayn knows there’s a leviathan gap between adoration and acceptance. he did fuck louis’s one great love. he isn’t stupid or naïve enough to think louis’s forgotten that.
so louis never asks ‘are you happy here?’
he’s here; what more does he require.
how to fill the spaces where love used to live:
sit yourself in front of the mirror – stay there until you memorize your own eyes, dark and grieving and framed with lashes. memorize them the way you once memorized his.
have faith in the simple human matters. think not of the sun rising or the raining falling. but trust that the post will make it, that the streetlights will be lit, that the waiter remembers ‘no tomatoes’.
take up meditation. clear your mind, sit lotus style, and breathe slowly. take this time to savor relaxation, contact spiritual guides, build internal energy, receive psychic visions, get closer to god, see past lives, take astral journeys, and develop compassion, love, patience, generosity, and forgiveness.
do not go out dancing.
do not burn old photographs, but put them away carefully.
wash your sheets so you smell only of yourself again.
“it’s funny.” louis remarks one night after a little too much sangria on the back porch. he hooks his shakespearean chin over zayn’s shoulder, peering down at dreamy arches, gently smudged outlines, sharp corners, but the center in soft focus. “the habits we form…you sleep next to someone for years, and when they’re gone, the bed just feels so…empty. you feel so empty. and suddenly you can’t imagine how you could’ve ever spent all those years before…sleeping alone.”
“louis – ” you’re drunk, is what zayn goes to say.
“ – don’t take that as an invitation, zayn.” louis’s crisp soprano interrupts primly. there’s a quiet calm breeze floating through the air and zayn can feel louis’s bronze fringe tickling the back of his neck and louis’s alcohol flushed cheek resting on the pulse of his neck, “what’s your habit?”
“breathing.” zayn answers, gazing out into the stretching darkness. the ocean looks like velvet after sundown in ibiza, the waves rolling, rested, soothed. all the stars are out tonight, a cocktail of burning supernovas drunk with fire and night.
louis’s voice gets small – zayn knows louis is secretly very sensitive – “how do you do it? how do you let go?”
and zayn laughs because fucking hell like he knows, he’s still struggling himself, drowning his demons beneath the sea, but louis’s eyes are very lost and a hollow sort of blue, like maybe they’re missing pigments of green, so he tries, “first, you convince yourself that you have to, that if you don’t, you’ll die. so then you do and you realize that…you can.”
and yeah, it’s weird, learning how to breathe again. the first couple times, he was sure he couldn’t but then he opened his lungs and gasped deeply and the air tasted fresh and cool. it gets easier from there, just knowing that he can…be…without liam, that maybe some things can be just as simple as breathing.
“that sounds terrifying.” louis behind the façade of money, notoriety, rivieras, is awfully vulnerable.
“yes.” he agrees, butting his temple lightly against louis’s. “this is the world. wonderful and terrible. but don’t be afraid.”
louis goes into his room that night and stays there.
how to fill the spaces where love used to live (part two):
adopt a louis. let it adopt you back.
when you are alone and curled into yourself in a bed so deep you’re drowning, stretch yourself wide and breathe fully. inhale oxygen, peace, the cosmos. exhale carbon, malice, the loneliness.
let yourself only see what is in front of you – the ivory beach, the vibrant marketplace, the chipping paint of a ’26 typewriter.
replace desirous lavenders with vivacious peonies.
take cups of tea the way you once took shots – without thought, with abandon, with hope.
eat even though your tongue is made of wool.
shower even though you skin feels raw.
everybody has a different cure for heartbreak.
the nutritionist told zayn he should eat more root vegetables, said that if he had more carrots, he would become grounded, rooted, then his head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives.
(louis objects to the idea. louis hates carrots.)
the psychic told zayn that his heart carried too much weight. for twenty dollars, she’d tell him what to do. he handed her the twenty. she patted his hand, smiling, ‘don’t worry, lovely, you’ll find a nice girl soon’.
(at the bar, a very beautiful lady approaches him. her name is perrie and she has hair like spun-gold. she offers to buy him a drink, he says ‘thanks but no thanks’. she doesn’t really have what he wants.)
the psychotherapist told zayn he should spend an hour a day sitting in a dark space with his ears plugged – conquer his fears.
(he tries that once but he can’t stop thinking about how strange it is to be hiding in a closet so he comes out.)
the yogi told zayn to stretch everything but the truth. focus on the out-breaths. he said everyone finds happiness when they care more about what they can give than what they get.
(he phones tricia, and for the first time in a long time, he calls her ‘mum’, and he stays on the line while she cries.)
the pharmacist told zayn paroxetine, sertraline, xanax, prozac.
(he presses it to his lips and thank it for another day he’s here before swallowing it with crisp cold water.)
zayn doesn’t deny that he has bad days, that he’ll catch glimpses of neon soles of a passing runner or a flash of dark curls and have to smoke until his hands stop smoking.
and yes, there are times when he will want to call him – liam – he’s been practicing saying his name in the recess of his mind. he will go as far as holding the phone in his hand. he imagines telling him – liam – the unimaginable things like ‘you live in the space between my heartbeats’ and ‘i dream of you more often than i don’t’ and ‘my body is a dead language and you pronounce each word perfectly’.
but he won’t.
he’ll call his niall or his baba, then he’ll go to the cinema by himself (sometimes action, but mostly foreign), sit until he’s immersed in another world. he still smokes like a chimney, but he does a pack a day, then he’ll go to the coffee shop and read the post (sometimes economics, but mostly entertainment) until his problems seems less significant.
today, he’s taking a long walk on the beach. it’s hotter than most days but zayn doesn’t mind it. he finds a quiet spot down towards the villas and plants his feet in the sparkling water, feeling the sand slipping and sliding between his toes with the tug of the wave.
he pulls off his straw hat, turns his face towards the sun, and breathes. he can feel his heart pulsing, corroded but still sturdy, and the air is smooth going into his lungs, his sides expanding, every rib moving to accommodate the stretch; his body adjusting to his mind.
he smiles and the ink on his skin sings.
everybody has a different cure for heartbreak, but zayn has discovered you only need to know one thing and that is: incredible change happens in life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.
how to fill the spaces where love used to live (part three):
switch your cologne for something cleaner, that doesn’t remind you of sex and him.
wade into the sea, say ‘thank you’ to the sun for the light and ‘thank you’ to the moon for the current.
call your mother. call her ‘mum’ – let her voice cover yours. listen to what she has to say, the apologies she has to make, even if that doesn’t always make things right.
your chest is going to ache and you’ll attribute it to the weather.
your sheets are always cold, but remember that in the middle of the night, you overheat and that gives you nightmares.
drink more water, because you always tell yourself to anyway. tell yourself that it will fix everything. don’t be sad when it doesn’t.
learn that there are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes wide open (such as ‘honey-colored skin’, ‘long legs’, ‘freckled shoulder’, ‘blinding smile’, ‘sweet eyes’); and the other you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a ghost in natural colors (‘big, bright mouth’ and ‘fresh face’ and ‘green’).
remember not to forget either; do remember to forgive.
“i ran into that darling girl at the market. the one you wouldn’t give the time of day to. what’s her name?” louis is unpacking the groceries in the kitchenette. his voice is airy and travels like bells as always.
zayn is shading in a corner on his sketchpad, “perrie.”
“perrie, right. what a sweetheart. was short a fiver and she swooped right in. saved me quite an embarrassment in front of the fruit stand. i gave her some of my apples. anyway, why don’t you go out with her?” louis has a very convoluted, and what he thinks – tactical, way of arriving unceremoniously to a point.
“w – what?” zayn reels, “why? did she say something?”
“no, no. don’t reckon she even remembers me being with you. i was just – ” louis puts down the milk and turns. his eyes are cerulean and pensive, “you’re doing so well, you know. i was just thinking if you’d start…seeing people again. and perrie’s nice. and she’s interested.”
and she’s not liam. it’s not explicitly said but it’s implied. louis is watching zayn’s reaction very intently, for the telltale twitch or stiff spine but zayn hasn’t paused in his sketch, just shrugs, “if it’s meant to be, it will be. there’s a point when fate meets destiny. i think when it happens, you just know.”
zayn can hear louis’s eye roll from where he sits, inside by the back porch, but louis is also smiling looking satisfied, mimicking with mystical hand gestures, “ooh, destiny.” then, “oh fucker, i forgot paprika.” then, “oi ghandi! be a dove and bring us back some paprika.”
it’s zayn’s turn to roll his eyes, strolling over to the door and slipping on his jacket. louis skips out of the kitchen to see him out, grinning impishly with his forget-me-not blue eyes crinkled sweetly, “cheers, darling.”
the spice cart louis insists on is down by the pier about 10 minutes from the house. it’s sunny out today, as it is most days in ibiza, and very breezy. zayn’s just about debating rather or not to light a cigarette when he stops short at the sight of a long, lithe figure leaning against the railing of the shore.
shoulders that can hold up the universe, tanned arms, legs that outran the entire world.
liam.
this is liam – actually liam.
in zayn’s dreams, he thinks he’s painted this image of an idolized statue of liam, composed of perpendicular lines and wide spaces. but liam in real life is much softer. he’s inevitably solid and golden, like the medal he won for great britain, but he’s also 18, hesitant, and shifty. liam is gangly with his lengthy limbs, maneuvering them this way then that. liam scuffing his converse on the concrete. liam smiling nervously and wringing his hands and when he opens his mouth, it’s liam’s voice, deep and tender and worn, “hi.”
zayn’s head is positively spinning.
when he manages to speak, it’s surprisingly steady considering he thinks he just had a mild thrombosis and he totally didn’t take his xanax today, “are you lost?”
liam smiles dotingly. he tilts his head, the light is dizzying on the planes of his cheeks, and zayn’s heart folds like an origami. he answers quietly, “perhaps.”
“i don’t think i can be of much help.” zayn huffs a laugh and tells himself to remember to breath.
“that’s okay.” liam shrugs, stepping closer shyly. “things are sweeter when they’re lost. i know – because once i wanted something and i got it. it was the only thing i ever wanted badly.”
“and?”
“and when i got it, it turned to dust in my hands.”
“i’m sorry.” zayn apologizes.
liam’s brows knit, he shakes his head, “it’s not your fault – ”
“no, liam. it’s not my fault. and it’s taken me a hell lot of time to figure that out. i blamed myself for your ambition and i blamed myself when we failed. all i think of ever is that i love you, but i was miserable, liam. you never did notice… too busy running until…i don’t know how you got so far. from then on, all you did was forget. and all i did was forgive.”
liam looks tortured, gold fading to copper, “you never said – ”
here is the repeated image of lovers destroyed, you asked for it:
“we can say it all we want but they’re just words and we ran out of things to say a long time ago, didn’t we. there’s only so many ways to say ‘i love you, i love you forever’ and ‘right next to you’ when we never believed each other when we said it.” zayn swallows even though his throat feels rough, “so i’m sorry that winning the medal didn’t turn out to be what you had expected. but if you’re here just because what you thought to be your dream collapsed on you, then you’d better go.”
zayn turns away. his eyes are stinging. he concentrates on the harbor, on a small cruising sailboats swinging in the breeze, and reminds himself to open his lungs. in his peripheral, liam is standing with his head bowed, his chest rising and falling slowly.
nothing. zayn had known.
but suddenly, “it’s the twenty-third.”
and it’s like this. there’s a moment where zayn’s mind goes blank and he’s just staring, then like he’s been struck by lightening, it all comes back and it’s every smile and every touch, every kiss and every laugh, and he remembers clear as day, the first time he ever saw liam on a football field when he was 7 years-old and thinking ‘i’m home’.
“i’ve been here for two weeks, zayn. i saw you, that day on the beach, and i wanted to talk to you…but you looked happy…happier than i’ve seen you in a long time with me. i thought about leaving, that maybe we’d be better at loving each other separately.”
liam’s skin is the color of a savage harvest and his mouth is soft like autumn, “but all night i slept and dreamed i was running. there was a mountain road…olympus, maybe…and flowers so beautiful i wanted to pick them all and press them in a book. that way i could keep them – and they wouldn’t change.” liam’s voice cracks and it’s like watching solar flare, “i think you were running with me. i think you’ve always been – running beside me.”
zayn gazes into liam’s eyes and it’s so bright, like he melted an entire sun. and liam’s hand is covering his, calloused and burning, and it’s quiet for twenty-seven heartbeats.
“if the only thing we have to gain in being with each other is each other.” that’s liam pulling him close. “my god, that’s enough.” that’s liam’s forehead pressed against his. “my god, that’s plenty.”
but it’s zayn that closes the gap and kisses him, tasting the truth off liam’s tongue.
my god, that is so so much light to give.
(in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth).
zayn malik doesn’t believe in heaven, but if he did, he would think he was there.
“if i believed in heaven, i would think we’re there.”
heaven for zayn, then, is life on a cruising sailboat on a clear summer day in the middle of the mediterranean with the heat beating down on the back of his neck and his feet dangling in the water.
(and god said, ‘let there be light,’ and there was light).
liam is floating on his back in the crystalline waters, laughing, “what happens when you die if there’s no heaven?”
zayn doesn’t really want to talk about this, but liam is grinning roguishly, so he sighs and grudgingly obliges, “when we’re dead, we’re just dead. we’re dust.”
(god called the dry ground ‘land’, and the gathered waters he called ‘seas’, and god saw it was good).
liam splashes him just for the sake of it. zayn rolls his eyes, sulking back onto the deck. liam follows, climbing up the ladders and zayn watches the waves roll off the rivets of his muscled back, the way the sea stood up and hugged him, as though liam were responsible for keeping it blue.
(so god created mankind in his image, in the image of god he created them).
“that’s too bad. i would miss you, when i’m dust.” liam takes a cup of iced rum and presses it to his face. liam never gets sunburned, zayn speculates it’s because he’s a piece of the nova’s core; liam says spf.
“you can’t miss anyone when you’re dust.” zayn snaps, mood soured.
liam’s by his side in a flash. he kisses zayn’s cheek, his mouth sweet like rum and raspberries and the galaxy. he puts his arms around zayn and liam’s still all wet, zayn squirms but liam doesn’t let go, “tell me what’s wrong.”
“it’s stupid.”
“tell me anyways.”
(the lord god said, ‘it is not good for the man to be alone’).
zayn twists in liam’s grasp until they’re face-to-face. liam’s bones feel like arrows beneath his palm and there’s a constellation of freckles on liam’s shoulder. he focuses there, murmuring in a rush, “if there is a heaven, then there’s probably a hell and chances are, that’s where i’m going and i wouldn’t see you again; what would i do without you?”
they’re eighteen and on top of the world and they finally have each other again.
(so the lord god caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh).
liam laughs, but it’s very gentle. he traces zayn’s brow with his thumb before kissing him tenderly, “you’re a part of me, made from me. i think that’s why you always had the ability to stand alone, because you’re complete, whereas i will always be missing you. where you go, i go – i am never without you.”
(zayn is flesh of his flesh; bone of his bone).
“you’re right.” zayn concedes before they kiss on it, searing and strong, zayn’s hands on liam’s hips.
(zayn is called ‘zayn’, for he is taken out of ‘liam’).
then they head down into the bedroom, liam’s mouth slick on zayn’s neck, liam whimpering into zayn’s chest, hands scrambling as zayn rocked slowly into him, and they made love on it.
(and they become one flesh).
“there isn’t any me. i’m you.” liam says much later, when they are back on the deck to watch dusk turn into night, “don’t make up a separate me.”
and zayn malik doesn’t believe in heaven; but he believes in liam.
(they were both naked, and they felt no shame).
i have named the planets after us:
mercury (we met sunday on a football field)
venus (we fell in love quickly after that)
mars (we had our first argument about the color of darkness)
jupiter (but we’re gods, remember, and nothing can separate us)
saturn (not the seeds that spouted roses that spouted thorns)
uranus (not heaven and certainly not the angels)
neptune (not that blue ocean we found raging in your heart)
pluto (nor the black night that nearly tore us apart)
there were evenings, and there were mornings – the eleventh year.