Finding The Courage (a Ziam Mayne AU)

Chapter Twenty-Seven "No More Secrets"

Liam's POV

What was I doing here? Taking my new boyfriend to see my dying dickhead of a father.

Boyfriend. I liked calling him that. I hadn't noticed how desperately I'd been wanting to call him that until I was finally able to. It took away the scary part of being with him - as ridiculous as that might sound. It felt safer knowing he was mine and I was his and no one could do anything about it.

Except maybe... Stan. Are you completely out of your mind, Liam?! What if Zayn wouldn't want to be with me anymore once he'd met my father? Stan was the last person I should be introducing to anyone in my life who I wanted to stay. What was I thinking?!

I must either subconsciously really, really desperately want to get rid of Zayn again or maybe... maybe I just really, really desperately wanted him to know. No more secrets.

I looked over at Zayn who had fallen asleep in the passenger seat a while ago. His cheek was smudged against the leather of the seat back, his breath condensing on the shiny, black material.

Without further ado, I looked out for the next parking lot, stopped the car and gently shook him awake. "Zayn.", I whispered. "Zaynie? Wake up."

He slowly opened his eyes, blinked at me and then looked around him. "Are we there yet?"

"Not quite.", I said, smiling at the dinky way he rubbed his eyes. "But I gotta talk to you."

He was instantly awake and looked at me worried. "What's wrong?"

I shook my head. "Nothing. I just need to tell you some things."

"Liam, it's okay. You really don't need to tell me.", he objected.

"No. You deserve to know. And I want you to know." I swore I could hear my heart beat over the music coming from the radio. I wasn't this nervous because I was about to tell him everything. I wanted him to know. But telling him, meant reliving everything. Everything I'd kept locked up inside me for the most part of my life, everything I'd been so desperately trying to forget.

"You sure?" He gave me an uncertain look.

I turned off the radio. "Never been more sure about anything in my life."

I tried to find a good place to start. But there really wasn't. They were all crap:

"Stan - my father - well he's never been much of a father to me. When I was younger he would shout at me a lot but I had it better than my mother. He would scream at her and beat her and...worse. She eventually couldn't live like that anymore and killed herself. But he killed her - not actively - but I know he did - it was his fault... She cut her wrists. I found her in our bathroom one night in a pool of her own blood when I was eight." My stomach wrenched at the memory of my dying mother on the cold bathroom tiles but I needed to go on. I couldn't stop now. I needed to go through with this - for my own sake as well.

"Stan played the weeping widower for a few weeks and then he snapped. He would blame me for her death and started draining all his anger on me. He would make up funny excuses when my teachers - or anyone, really - asked what happened and since I never spoke up, they just believed him. He's always been a terrible person but when he started drinking it just got worse and worse. The only upside was that he would sleep longer and I would have a few more hours in which I wouldn't have to be scared of him.

That's around the time when I met Harry. I swear, if it hadn't been for him I would have ended up very differently." I couldn't help but smile at the memory of the ten-year-old Harry. Smiling at me in the hallway, dimples and all, stumbling over his own feet, never angry, never sad, always a reason to laugh. "I mean, you know him. He's always been like that. Cheerful, lightheaded. For a long time he didn't know what was going on in my life. But he was like the brother I never had. He kept me sane.

When I was fifteen, I packed my stuff together and I got the hell out of there. Harry's family let me stay with them. Stan came to their house a few times because he was certain I would be there but they protected me. They showed me that not every family was as fucked up as mine." I realized I was being bitter but I didn't care right now. "Stan and I weren't family. Family means love and care. Stan had killed all the love that had ever existed in my family.

I never brought up the courage to go to the police, though. I was scared they wouldn't believe me or take me to some orphanage or some stupid family I didn't want to be with. I felt finally safe with Harry's family and I needed that security to build myself up again.

And now he's dying. That asshole just decided to crawl back into my life right when it started to get better again. And decides to die? You have no idea how much I hate having to come here now, to hear him rant about how much I ruined his life again. But I want to show him that he didn't ruin mine. I want him to know that all the crap he loaded on to me didn't bring me to my knees. Or rather that I managed to get up again."

I had started crying. Silent tears, running over my cheeks, dropping from my chin onto my jeans, darkening the fabric where they hit it. I hadn't looked at Zayn for the duration of my report. Now I lifted my head and waited for him to say something.

He didn't say anything. He had tears in his eyes as well. I don't think I'd ever seen him cry. He silently pulled me towards him, wrapping one arm around my body, placing the other hand at the back of my head.

I started sobbing into his jacket, letting all the emotions that had gathered in my chest while I was talking pour out of me. I held on to him like a little kid to a cuddly toy, taking in the comforting warmth of his body.

I cried until there was no tear left in me to shed but stayed huddled up to his chest for much longer, until the sun had already started to set. "That's why I wanted you to come along.", I said eventually, my voice all hoarse from crying, and pulled away just a little bit, so that I could look at him.

"What do you mean?", he breathed, softly rubbing the drying tears from my cheeks with his thumb.

"I want to show him one of the things I got right." I gave him a small smile.

He kissed my forehead and then leaned his head against mine. "Then I'm more than happy to oblige."