Finding The Courage (a Ziam Mayne AU)

Chapter Seven "The Morning After"

Zayn's POV

When I opened my eyes the next morning I turned around to see Liam. But he was gone. I looked around. His clothes were gone, too, and the door stood open.

"Shit...", I muttered. "You bloody idiot!" I cursed myself. Why did I have to be so naïve? As if he would treat me any different from his other achievements.

I flipped around and buried my head in my pillow, groaning. Idiot.

After a while, I gave up trying to fall back asleep and got out of bed. I didn't bother getting dressed, since my family wouldn't be back until this evening.

Slowly, I trotted into the kitchen, still not exactly 100% awake and wearing nothing but my boxers, to make me a cup of coffee.

When I entered the kitchen I found - to my utter surprise - Liam, standing in front of the cooker, gesturing around with a fork, humming a familiar melody, only wearing his sweatpants.

My mouth went agape. He didn't leave.

For the first time since I've known him I noticed the scars on his back. Thin, white lines, crisscrossed over the skin at his lower back, some of them disappearing into his trousers.

I tried to swallow but my mouth was completely dry. I wanted to ask him about them, but if it's something he hadn't told me about, he surely didn't want to talk about them at all.

I cleared my throat and tried to seem not too surprised. "You're still here." I said, more as a question than a realization.

He turned around and gave me a soft smile. "Mornin'.", he murmured, walking towards me, and bent down to kiss my collarbone, sending a pleasant shiver down my spine.

When I felt his cool fingers on my waist I remembered I was practically naked and looked around for something to put on. I saw a jumper lying on one of the kitchen chairs and quickly grabbed it, pulling it over my head.

"No need to be ashamed, Zaynie.", he said, smirking. "Nothing I haven't already seen yet."

I felt myself blush and looked away in a desperate attempt to hide it. "I'd expected you gone.", I said, as nonchalantly as possible.

He went back to the cooker, continuing whatever I'd interrupted. My eyes drawn to the lines on his back again. "I told you I would stay." He said that in all seriousness, not a hint if sarcasm, no harsh comment - he meant what was saying, exactly how he was saying it.

"Well, I kinda just... assumed-", I began, but he cut me off.

"Well, your assumption was wrong. You know I don't make many promises, but if I do, I keep them." He loaded what he'd prepared on a plate and went towards the desk, gently kissing me on the cheek, as he passed me. "Breakfast?"

"Love to.", I mumbled skeptically and followed him.

He placed the plate on the table and handed me a piece of baguette. "By the way, that's my jumper."

"Oh, sorry.", I said and started to try and take it off.

"Don't bother, it's fine. Suits you.", he said with a slight laughter in his voice. My heart melted away at the sound of his raspy morning voice. "What's wrong with you this morning? You act different than usual."

Different? Everything is different! How do you just act like this was the most normal thing ever?

"Nothing's wrong.", I said simply and took a fork to load some of the scrambled egg in my mouth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After a while we'd gone back to the sofa. We didn't turn on the TV or any music, we just sat there, talking, laughing, sometimes not saying anything at all, and it was fine like that. As strange as it seemed, after that night, that made me worried things could get awkward between us, all that awkwardness had disappeared.

He'd stopped randomly kissing me and giving me that 'remember, we had sex?'-smirk and I felt like everything could be normal again...

Except it couldn't. We had had sex! Nothing would be normal anymore.

I woke up at some point, realizing my head was lying on Liam's chest. I froze. I thought about sitting up. But he would have woken me up if it'd bothered him. Right?

He gently caressed my cheek with his thumb. "You know?", he said, absentmindedly stroking my hair. "This is nice. It's a nice change from running off in the morning." I turned my head to look at him, giving him a reserved smile. "I like it.", he said, reciprocating my smile.

I sighed. "Yeah...but you didn't have to sleep with me to spend a nice day together." This was the first time we brought that up in a while. I looked at him, unsure what he was going to do.

He took a slow, deep breath and held it until he spoke again. "It's raining."

My tense body loosened and I got up. Well, there it was, that was it. This meant nothing to him. He'd had a good time and that was all that mattered to him. He didn't for a second think that this could amount to anything else.

I looked out the window. It was actually properly pouring with rain, I could barely even see my next door neighbour's house. "I should give you a lift home, then. I can't let you walk through that storm."

"Thanks."