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Secrets I have held in my heart
Are harder to hide than I thought
Maybe I just wanna be yours
— Artic Monkeys, “I Wanna Be Yours”
“Zayn,” Liam — smiling beautifully — exhales, blowing out the candles of grace. “What’re you thinking about?”
A crown used to rest upon Zayn’s solitude’s brow. And heavy the head of that solitude whose brow used to support that crown did lie, until the throne room ran red, and the solitude’s crown emerged a hollow emblem fit for a hollow king. And Liam emerged a solid king. And the solitude’s head was made uneasy under the solid king’s heel. And Zayn emerged as a subject, both under the solid king and in this sentence.
“I . . .” Zayn’s eyes — a window to the soul — shutter —
“Ed Sheeran — you know, that ginger lad who’s been knocking about doing a few gigs — he’s just gone and lobbed a whole CD of forty of his songs at Haz! Proper mental, innit?”
The air was heavier than the head that wore the crown with a bittersweet nostalgia, like finding an old photo and remembering why you stopped taking them. As light through yonder window broke — a harp played to unravelling by Dawn’s rosy fingers on Liam’s gold scalp’s taut, beautiful strings — Liam ached to share with Zayn the jewels of what Harry had shared with him earlier.
Articulation was a dropped gem.
Zayn raised his terrible brows and crushed his terrible lip to pearl. “A lot, that. I mean, to listen to?”
Liam’s face was so bright it made gold blush dull, his voice rising to roaring velvet. He tamed Zayn: “No, like — if we fancy anything on it, we can have it!” And was called the most wild thing of all and made king of all wild things.
“Wow, that’s mad generous,” Zayn said, tossing a pearl of appreciation. He thought he would remember the smile that the king of all wild things had right then forever. He really did. He thought he’d remember it when he was old, and when everything else was gone from his head, he’d still remember it. “Especially for someone keen to get their own stuff out there.”
People write poems about things that are pretty, or handsome, or nice to look at. They say things about them; they use fancy words. They compare things to other things, and you read them, and you think, Okay, that’s nice.
But the king of all wild things’ beauty was not nice in that way. It was not something you could say or write. When he sat on the grass, it was simply grass beneath him.
But the king being there made the grass feel more like grass than it usually did. More intensely itself. When he turned his head toward Zayn, it wasn’t a swift turn. It wasn’t a slow turn. It was the only turn a head could possibly make at that moment.
When he said, “Come on,” it wasn’t an invitation. It was a command. Not a command that forced. A command where coming on was the only thing left to do in the universe.
And then he was just a boy, pretending to be a wolf, pretending to be king. WALKING.
And Zayn. Zayn was just a wild thing. FOLLOWING.
And the world was just the world. BEING.
When you look at the king, you don’t think of other things; you feel something. Something that makes you glad to be in the same room. Or on the same planet.
The wild thing decided he wanted to wear a wolf suit and make mischief of one kind with the king.
“What sort of stuff are we talking, then, Li? All acoustic and folksy, is it?”
Or make the king get naked and fall on his face.
“I don’t know exactly; Harry didn’t offer much in the way of detail. But can you imagine? Forty songs just handed over like that?”
Love’s chariot was at a breakneck pace.
The world outside the till-then-aching window, which had long since vanished yet had certainly sustained the illusion with a marvellous grace, ultimately did indeed vanish (and dare it be said it was in light of how there was the velvet of a tiger’s roar in the way the king of all wild things brushed his brown hair back from his forehead — a regal poise, softly trembling, made true by a grace silently worn and dripping with — hemorrhaging — diamonds).
“Well, his loss is our gain, eh? Right then, let’s have a look for a CD player and let this wild rumpus start.”
“I’m thinking about takeaway, but it’s probably too late,” Zayn concludes.
Liam hums a song in response. It’s a song Zayn knows. It’s about a girl and a boy. The boy likes the girl.
Zayn wishes Liam would stop.
Inside Zayn’s chest, a wild thing is. It roars. It stomps. It wants to get out. It wants to grab Liam. It wants to bite him. But not a bad bite. A bite that says, “I LIKE YOU.”
But it cannot.
Liam likes girls. Zayn knows this. He writes lyrics about them. He talks about them. They have long hair. They’re pretty.
Zayn isn’t a girl.
This makes Zayn’s wild thing angrier. It claws at his ribs. It screams. It breaks the furniture inside his chest. Zayn wishes he could sail away in a boat. He would sail to a place where boys like boys.
Liam sighs. He pushes his hair from his eyes. The wild thing goes everywhere inside. Zayn’s hands feel it. Zayn’s feet feel it. Zayn’s hair feels it. “This is nice.”
Zayn says, “Yes.” He wants to say, “Being with you is nice. Being near you is nice. You are the nicest thing I know.”
But he doesn’t.
The wild thing paces.
“Look,” Liam says, pointing. He is so beautiful. He is the best boy in the whole world. “A shooting star.”
Liam is Zayn’s best friend, and Zayn wants to kiss him more than he’s ever wanted anything in his entire life. More than he wanted to make the basketball team when he was nine. More than he wants to get into college or graduate or grow up or anything.
“Make a wish.”
Zayn wishes. He wishes to tell Liam that he watches him breathe. That it makes him feel like he can breathe, too.
Zayn wishes. He wishes to tell Liam that he loves him. He just . . . does. That it just happened. Like breathing. Easier, actually.
The boat kisses the current’s cheek. The great star drowns in the west. Drawing in the night, Zayn shivers softly, the small beast within him coughing once.
He has left where the wild things are.
When Zayn first arrived on the island, the wild things did not roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth and roll their terrible eyes and show their terrible claws. They did not bow. They did not name Zayn King of All Wild Things. They only sniffed the air and smelled the fear on him, which was their own smell, and they nodded. They knew him.
Zayn was just a boy in a wolf suit, and the suit wasn’t for being brave. It was for hiding. He had willed a forest to grow in his room and an ocean to tumble by, because even a sea of unknowns was better than the one that lived under his bed.
And so they started a trembling.
Fear does not want a master. It wants company. The wild things would lean in close, their breath hot and sour, and say, “Stay. Stay and be frightened with us. It is safe here. It is always the same.”
And that is why Zayn had to leave.
“Liam,” Zayn says. He stares at his shoes. They are old. They are scuffed. They are not the kind of shoes you wear when you tell someone you want to kiss them.
“I want to kiss you.”
“Okay,” Liam says.
And then he kisses Zayn.
And it is the kind of kiss that makes Zayn know he was never so happy in his whole life.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Liam says.
And Zayn says, “I’m glad I’m alive.”
Some people need air. Zayn needed this.
The wild thing settles down now. It curls up and goes to sleep.