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“I just picked up a book at the library about how to hot wire cars. Let’s go joy riding!”
“Are you sure about this, Zayn?” Louis asks as Zayn looks at him with an excited glint in his amber eyes.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Zayn gives Louis a little nudge by the shoulder, “C’mon, it’ll be fun. I heard Ben’s car has a sick turbo engine.”
Louis stares at Zayn, blue eyes piercing with concern. Louis isn’t one to turn down exciting mildly illegal activities – especially if it’s going to displease their annoying flat administrator – but this time it’s different. Zayn’s been acting a lot…impulsive lately. It’s weird. (Not that Louis’ one to talk about impulsiveness since he’s one who has always have had a struggle biting his tongue but still.) Zayn’s even been more social and bubbly which is yet again also irrevocably weird.
He’s been friends with Zayn for five years. He was the friendly sophomore who tried to accommodate anyone whose okay with his loudness and Zayn was this shy freshman who he thought he wasn’t going to get along with but turns out to be quite the opposite. He ended up sharing his flat with Zayn and now, here they are. Louis, struggling to find a proper paying job and Zayn, freshly graduated and ready to see what the real world holds.
With all that shared history, Louis knows something about Zayn is off.
Louis wonders if it had to do with Zayn breaking off his three year relationship with Perrie. They’ve been together since midway their sophomore year in Uni and they even got a little sort-of-kinda engagement along halfway through the span of the relationship. The break up was brash and unexpected and no one saw it coming.
All of a sudden, Perrie’s in LA in a swimsuit showing off her fit body and her ring-less finger and Zayn gets this impromptu lotus flower tattoo and makes Danny Phantom’s ghost version his new hairstyle icon. Louis barely catches up to it and it all happened in a span of a measly week.
“Zayn, are you sure you’re alright?” Louis asks slowly, hand reaching up to Zayn’s tattooed arm.
“Never been better,” Zayn says with chuckle.
“You’ve been acting strange lately,”
Zayn scoffs a little and shakes his head. “’M alright, Lou. Stop worrying.”
Louis looks at him dubiously. “Your hair’s silver.”
“I’ve been wantin’ to do it for a while now.”
“You went to Kylie Jenner’s party,” Louis says, “You don’t usually go to parties like that,”
“Wanted a change of crowd,” Zayn replies smoothly.
Louis doesn’t reply, just stares at Zayn in concentration, trying to analyze what’s going on in his mind. He usually succeeds but this time he fails. He sees nothing to give away Zayn’s true feeling and he’s kind of wonderin’ if maybe he’s just overthinking things.
“So, are you with me or not?” Zayn asks after half a minute into their stare off.
Louis scrutinizes Zayn for a second or two before giving in with a sigh.
*******
An hour and a half later, Louis is wheezing with Zayn in Ben Winston’s hijacked Jaguar 2010 C-X75 along the freeway. Grinning from ear to ear, Louis looks out the window hollering, “Wooooooooooo!” as they wheeze down a tunnel, everything getting lost in shadows and nothing but the sound of Louis Tomlinson. Zayn laughs along, revving the engine up even more as they exit the tunnel with the late evening light dimming the environment.
Louis has to admit. He missed this a lot. Neither of them would admit it but they’ve grown apart the last few months and it’s nice having careless adventures like this once in a while. They ride around for a few more minutes, passing speed limit only in the slightest and praying they won’t get caught because technically, this car is considered stolen. (“Borrowed. We’ll return it,” Louis would always say.)
They take a breather by the forest they’ve discovered two years back and Louis starts passing the bottle of Jack Daniel’s they took from Ben’s glove compartment. They giggle and talk nonsense and even scream sometimes. It’s fun. Being with Zayn, has always been fun.
“But seriously, are you okay?” Louis asks in the midst of their conversation.
“Okay? Okay about what?” Zayn retaliates before tipping his head back and letting liquor pour down his throat.
“You’ve been actin’ weird lately,”
“You’ve said that already,”
“You haven’t given me a proper answer,”
“I told you, I’m fine,” Zayn dismisses with a shake of his head.
“Y’know you started bein’ distant with me ever since El and I broke up,” Louis says, “Are you mad ‘cos of that?”
Eleanor was a past girlfriend. She and Louis lasted for about four years before they finally realized that their love has fizzled out. It was heartbreaking and Louis didn’t really cope in the best way but that was that. A mutual break up between two people who tried to make it work.
Zayn scoffs and laughs before downing another gulp. He wipes his sleek mouth with the back of his hand and shakes his head. “No,” he says, “If anything I’m glad.”
Louis’ brows scrunches up. “Why?”
Zayn turns to him, his head resting against the seat and just stares at him. Louis starts to feel awkward when Zayn shakes his head and turns away. “Never mind.”
“You can’t just leave it at that,” Louis breathes out with a nervous chuckle.
Zayn sighs and decides to divert the topic about something else. “Why are you lookin’ for a new job?”
“I need better pay,” Louis answers simply.
“You can’t just leave it at that,” Zayn says with a mischievous grin, mimicking Louis’ tone a few moments before.
Louis smiles sadly before looking down and biting his bottom lip and letting the elephant in the room slip out of his tongue. “I got someone pregnant.”
He can hear Zayn’s sharp intake of breathe, making his blue eyes look up. Zayn’s not looking at him anymore and instead has his gaze cast down to his lap. Louis hears him mumble out something along the lines of, “I should have left it at that,” before setting his amber eyed-gaze back at Louis.
“Who’s the lucky lady?” Zayn asks.
“Briana,” Louis mumbles, “She’s a good friend of mine and well….y’know the rest.”
It was quite for a while after that. The tension thick and hardly bearable in the air. Louis was expecting Zayn to speak out but he ends up speaking out first. It isn’t that he didn’t plan to tell him, it’s just that he can never find the right timing with Zayn dealing with his own break up and being uncharacteristically spontaneous at the same time. Besides, what’s a better time to tell Zayn his condom failed him than when he’s intoxicated and brutally honest and far away from civilization?
“Say something,” Louis says when he can’t stand the tension anymore.
Zayn lets out a deep sigh, almost like it’s one of the last breathes he’ll ever take. “There’s this one last impulsive thing I want to do before anything else happens.”
Louis tilts his head, facing Zayn. “What’s that?”
And before Louis knows it, Zayn’s facing him and leaning in. Louis’ barely got time to process what’s happening before he feels Zayn’s lips on him. Zayn tastes like Jack Daniel’s and mint and Louis feels himself get intoxicated at each friction. He feels Zayn’s hands slide down his torso and then under his shirt. Skin on skin as his fingers get tangled up in Zayn’s freshly dyed grey hair. Things are going too fast but Louis can’t stop and he isn’t sure he wants to. Lips still attached together, they somehow maneuvered their way to the back seat. Zayn is straddling him, his fingers relentless in exploring Louis’ body.
Just as Zayn undoes the belt buckle that’s when Louis realizes that this may be the most impulsive thing they’ve done together and he has no problem with that at all.