The Romantic & the Cynic

The next morning, Sky rolled herself out of the yet again too comfy bed and got herself ready for her second day at work. Today she knew that the dress level would be casual so she decided to pull on a pair of jean capris, a grey sweatshirt with the word awesome and a pair of canvas sneakers. Those clothes would allow her to move around as she shot and allow her to get some more interesting angles. She threw her hair up in a ponytail and decided to wear her glasses instead of her contacts, her eyes tired from the long day before. She put on enough makeup to hide the imperfections but not enough to make it obvious that she was wearing it. And she was ready to go. She had gotten up early enough but still decided to leave an hour early because she had already experienced the traffic the day before.

Slinging her bags and purse over her shoulder, she made her way down to her car. She had decided to get to know the band she was shooting better so she quickly bought and downloaded their latest album to her phone and plugged it into the stereo, selecting a random song as she pulled out of her parking spot.

The day was grey with possible rain in the thick clouds so she kept the top up. As she made her way through the streets she had driven through the day before, she let the music start to sink into her brain. The song her phone had chosen was one called Kiss You. It was catchy and energetic and Sky could picture the five guys up on stage dancing and having fun as they sang the song to the fans in front of them. She hadn't listened too hard to their separate voices the day before because she had been so focused on the images she was recording so she was unable to tell who exactly was singing from her radio.

The songs came to her one after another and she was pleasantly surprised by the sounds she was hearing. They were up and happy, sad and mournful, silly and truthful in their own way. She was halfway through the album and almost at her destination when a song snuck up on her and she felt a surprising hitch in her heartbeat. It was Little Things. She did recognize Zayn's voice in the beginning. It started with slow and lazy sounding words like he was waking his lover late on a Sunday morning with a fresh breakfast and a sweet kiss, a bit of an edge to the word dots like he wanted to continue the amorous activities from the night before and finished with a final sweet kiss on the forehead with the words makes sense to me. She wondered if it was sung with Perrie floating in his mind as the words tumbled from his lips. She knew that from the brief research she had done, silently berating herself for getting sucked in, she knew he had been dating her when the song had been recorded. From the emotion that came through, it had to have been.

She shook herself out of the reverie as the song moved into the chorus and the rest of the group joined in. Zayn's voice got intermingled but she never quite lost it, even as the others got lost to her. She continued to listen to the rest of that song and the remainder as she finally hit the parking lot that was attached to the studio. She had only missed a couple of songs by that point but as she grabbed her bags and slid them over her shoulder, she found herself humming the catchy Kiss Me and unable to stop.

As she made her way into the building, she briskly passed the snooty receptionist who gave her a very annoyed look which caused creases in her perfectly laid foundation. Sky enjoyed the look as she made her way past the desk and up the stairs, forcing confidence into her steps as she approached the door. When she opened the door and looked in, the first thing that she sensed was silence, the opposite from the day before. She had come into so much the noise the day before that the opposite jarred her. But she was immediately happy for it. She could take the time before anyone showed up to test the room some more, play with the cameras. It was something that she could spend hours doing.
She walked into the room and was sliding her bags onto the chair in front of her when she saw the figure curled up into itself in the opposite corner. She recognized who it was only when she saw the dark silky hair peaking above the blanket wrapped around them.

"Zayn," she asked as she left her bags and started to walk towards him. She wasn't sure he was awake until she saw him move slightly, his body remaining buried in the blanket. "I didn't think you guys would be here yet."

She heard a gruff sigh escape the wrapped up bundle but she couldn't work out if any words said. Sky wasn't sure what to do so she pulled a camera out of her bag and started playing with it as she sat down on the chair in front of the sound board.

"You guys have a great spot, you know." She clicked a lens onto her camera and snapped a couple of pictures. "The view is stellar. I could spend all day hanging out on the deck under that sun." Another grunt, another slight movement. Sky took that as a sign of approval. "I can only imagine how much a month that costs. Rents here are atrocious."

Finally Zayn moved to face her. She was immediately struck by the bags underneath his eyes and the red streaks running through them. They were obvious signs of a person not getting enough sleep and she was disappointed. She had hoped that their conversation the night before would have given him at least a few hours worth of rest but it was obvious it hadn't. Probably not even a drop. She decided to trust that the walls she had broken through the night before were still crumbled so she put her camera down and leaned forward on her knees.

"What made you get here so early? I though nobody was scheduled to be here for another half hour or so.

Zayn shrugged his shoulders and threw the blanket off of him. Sky noticed he was wearing the same outfit as the night before, including the bare chest. He stood and reached beside him where a grey tank top lay crumpled on the floor. As he slid it on, Sky hated to admit that she enjoyed watching his muscles move as the fabric moved to cover it.

"I couldn't sleep and the guys were hassling me with stupid questions. They couldn't seem to leave me alone." Sky wondered if she was to blame for that after having given them the advice she had. They may have decided that her advice to simply talk to him meant to never leave him a quiet moment, not something she had intended.

"So you came here? Not quite the ideal sleeping solution." She imagined him trying to remain calm as they talked at him and finally having enough, having to leave. "They're just worried about you. It's good to have people worry about you."

Zayn turned to face her and she immediately saw that the walls had been rebuilt and may be even higher. His face was stone and his fists were balled up at his side.

"Look, we had our one and only kumbaya moment last night and it was sweet and special and we all smoked the pipe." His voice was gritty from sleep and she watched as he ran a tight hand through his hair, tugging at the ends in obvious frustration. "But that was last night and this is today. And today I am tired and don't want to talk to anyone. Least of all a photographer who just showed up yesterday and seems to think that she is my best friend all of a sudden. So take this as a hint. Tuck away the fact that you got to see Zayn Malik without a shirt twice into your sixteen year old part of your brain all females seem to have, have a special moment with it and then just do your fucking job."

And with that, Zayn opened the door and walked outside the studio, leaving a somewhat hurt Sky in the room alone.

Zayn felt his muscles tighten and his head start to pound again. As he walked down the hall, unsure of where he was going, he tried to force himself to slow his breathing down to a regular level. He felt bad for what he had said, spitting Sky's kindness from his bedroom back in her face as if she hadn't been able to talk him down from the ledge he had felt like he had been standing on. As they had talked in his room, the world of scandal and pain seemed to have withdrawn for the short period of time. Her voice, her casual body movements, her ability to talk to him about topics that didn't seem to cause him pain for once. He had been craving it for days and she had finally given him something that even his best friends, the guys he had spent so many hours, days, years around had been unable to. A moment to breathe and a moment to feel calm. He hadn't been sure how she had done it but she had. And he had just treated her like none of it had helped him. The same thing that he had done to everyone around him.

He reached the end of the hall and he felt his body need to sink. He leaned against the wall and slid down it, tucking his body as far into the corner as he could hoping to avoid detection. And he began to
cry again.