Drawn Out Dreams. [A Zarry Fanfiction.]

Chapter Fifty One

Zayn Malik’s mind knew that it had been pushed too far. There had never been a moment where it had felt so alarmed in all of Zayn Malik’s life, it had never pushed Zayn’s body around to do anything with such urgency before. The boy wasn’t used to it, this proved by the unsteady breaths that escaped from his lips with almost every rushed step. Even as the boy had sat at the front of the bus, his backpack clutched to his lap with his drawing book preciously tucked inside, his breaths had still tried to catch up with the fast pace that his heart had been beating within his chest.

His skin throbbed, the muscles beneath that were carefully wrapped underneath it aching to match. The raven-haired boy hadn’t exactly looked in a mirror yet; he didn’t have the time to as he quickly scuffed on his nearest pair of shoes before retreating from his Father’s front door. The back of his ankles hurt from where his trainers were digging uncomfortably into him, due to both the unusual position of them and the relentless way his feet dug against the pavement as he ran. The boy had finally been able to correct the way his shoes were when he had been able to sit on the bus, still making sure to tie an equal double knot in both his trainers when his hands and arms were half limp.

Zayn would let his breaths slowly catch up with him as his brown eyes went about their usual observing of their surroundings. This bus was starting to get very familiar to him now, the boy used the bus service atleast once a week. The seat was a little scratchy, the rough yet sturdy material causing his thighs to itch, the thin material of his school trousers not proving much of a shield to the bus seat. His arms were tightly wrapped around the backpack that was on his lip, his eyes catching as the passengers that would step onto the bus, pay their fare and walk past give him a certain look, a look he didn’t quite understand.

His poor mind was too fragile to even try to process the way that the various women would walk on with their shopping bags, their eyes drifting over him, the quick movements from their brightly coloured irises catching the cuts and bruises that the boy was yet to realise he owned. Their hands would subconsciously tighten around the pole that was next to his seat, helping to keep them sturdy and on their feet as the bus would push off from it’s spot. Some of the women would look to the floor and scurry off as if they hadn’t seen the boy, whereas the others would let their brow soften before they slowly trailed to the back to find a seat. All the raven-haired boy could do was hold onto his backpack tightly, trying to sniff away the little drips of red that would slowly slip from his nose and splash onto his white school shirt, a collection of red poppies that were sunk deeply into the material.

The more that the boy was sat on the bus, the more pain he began to feel. As the boy sat quietly and still on the front seat, his body slowly slipped away from what had been a highly adrenaline driven state which had forced his feet to run so hard to the bus stop. The more adrenaline that slowly dissolved from his blood flow, the more his body caught up with the reality of the original source of the adrenaline. Beneath the white school shirt and the small dripped drops of red, bruises were beginning to form. Zayn Malik’s olive coloured skin was coming out in camouflages of blues and purples, something the boy and his skin was often used too. His dark hair was messy and slowly slipping down from where it had been messily shoved from his face and back into it’s sloping position. The tips of his fringe would have gotten in his eyes if it weren’t for the glasses that were perched safely on his nose.

There were slight smudges on his glasses, which he struggled to see through. He simply sat on the bus and forced his eyes to look through the smudges. Of course, his beautiful mind would capture the detail of a thumbprint that was a cause of one of the smudges. His mind captured it, and the boy told himself that he would try to draw it out when his hands hurt a little less. His tightened grip onto his schoolbag didn’t exactly help either, his knuckles white from the force of his favourite possession.