nebula :: [malik]

[ xli :: transition ]

Happy Friday!  Posting this early because I've finally finished midterms...
***

All the care I would take, all the love that we made,

Now you're trying to find somebody to replace what I gave to you...

It's a shame you didn't keep it...

-"Shot for Me" || Drake

_______
"He's outside, again, isn't he?"

Niall nods to Louis from the couch.

They both spare a glance towards the fire escape.

Niall pulls his hood over his head. "Yup."

___

Life.

It's shit, really.

Or, that's what Zayn thinks as he sits on the fire escape outside the open window of his apartment. There's snow falling down, casting flakes across his black coat and black jeans and black boots and melting in his black hair and black lashes and across his rosy, cold skin.

It's cold.

But, Zayn isn't really worried too much about the weather.

He's inhaling tobacco and with it the nicotine into his lungs and he's watching the white smoke disappear with his cold breath into that snow as it falls down, down, down.

His lungs are burning with each breath - It's freezing out, and he should really be inside. He should really put on a hat, or a scarf at least, but his hat is buried somewhere in the mess in his room and his scarf is...well, his scarf is with Anais.

It's really very cold.

But, Zayn isn't really all that worried about the cold.

He inhales.

He exhales.

The cigarette between his fingers is growing smaller and smaller, and his other free hand is gripping the box of Camel's he's still got left. This is his third cigarette since he's been outside and he hasn't smoked this much in ages. Since the semester began, a box could last him a week. The longest it'd gone was a week and a half, but that was because the time he'd typically spend on the fire escape in solitude was replaced by all the time he'd spent with Anais.

The temperature seems to be dropping.

With the wind chill, it's in the negatives, tonight. No one's out. Typically, he'd be out and people watch and laugh because that had become a habit since he'd done it with Anais, but now, it's just so cold that anyone outside is hurrying to be in. Now, anyone outside is bundled in dark clothes with limbs and features barely distinguishable because it's just so damn cold.

The snow pours.

Down, down, down, down.

Zayn inhales the last of his cigarette and stomps it into ash on the fire escape. Louis' going to be pissed, he knows. He's sick of the growing accumulation of cigarettes becoming an 'eye sore' outside of their window.

"I sit out there, too, y'know," came his sassy retort.

"I'll clean 'em up," Zayn typically says in response.

"When?"

"When I get around to it."

Zayn typically does not get around to it.