Summary: what if tattoos just randomly appeared on our skin at key points in our lives and we had to figure out what they meant for ourselves?
By: Somerdaye.archiveofourown.org
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zayn doesn't have as many tattoos as some of his friends do. he's almost entirely certain this is because he hasn't lived, not to the extent that most people have. he’s never left england, he hasn’t won any awards or been on any teams, and he certainly hasn’t made a difference in the world. even the things he’s most proud of -- the mural he’d been asked to do on a wall of his secondary school, all the acceptance letters he’d stuffed beneath his pillow to prolong adolescence for as long as possible -- aren’t noteworthy. nothing he’ll be remembered for; not even his skin thinks so.
you'll see popstars and best-selling authors and presidents and youtube sensations with arms covered in permanent ink, like an also-heavily-tattooed artist had taken a sharpie marker to them. zayn's friends walk around with their seven or eight tattoos, happy to figure out the (red) ones that they haven't lived through yet; wearing the (faded black) ones that have passed like they're battle scars branded into their skin.
sometimes the ink gives you very clear instructions on what the next important thing in your life is going to be, but sometimes they're abstract -- for instance, zayn had gotten a yin-yang sign on his wrist when he was eight, and hadn't known what it meant until he met danny, with the same tattoo, three years later.
zayn has three tattoos in total: the connection to danny, arabic lettering on his chest that appeared before his grandfather passed away, and one that he hasn't interpreted yet. it probably won’t be difficult to understand, once he figures out what the L stands for. this L, burned into the base of his left hand’s ring finger, has been plaguing him for six months now, yet to fade to black.
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when you know that your life is about to be changed by the letter L, it suddenly occurs to you how very many things start with it.
he moves to London almost as soon as it appears, taking danny with him, because he (foolishly) thinks it will be that easy. it's great living there and all, definitely a different pace than bradford, but the L blazes strong and red still.
after that, he has to work for it. he applies for jobs at establishments that start with L, has gone through the local library’s entire L section on his fifteen minute breaks, and even goes so far as to turn down any street that starts with the damned letter. so far nothing has worked, and zayn feels like a bit of a failure -- it’s only his third tattoo, and he can’t get it right?
danny thinks it’s a name, which frustrates zayn even more. how many names begin with L?
“how would i even know where to start?” he asks danny during their thursday mcdonald’s run. “even if, by some miracle, i figured out which name i’m meant to look for, how do i know what it means?”
“well, that’s easy,” says danny. he says it through a mouthful of chips, though, so it takes zayn a moment to work out the words.
“easy? it’s easy, now?”
“look at the position of it,” he says, and zayn doesn’t need to pull off his glove to understand. danny spells it out for him anyway, because he’s an asshole, but also because he is zayn’s best friend and it comes with the job description. “left hand? ring finger? what else could it mean?”
he’s right, probably, but zayn still tells him to fuck off and eat his burger.
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there's a boy who lives in zayn's building who is, quite possibly, the most attractive person zayn has ever seen. sometimes zayn watches him go for his daily run, in the safety of his own flat. they haven't spoken, because zayn doesn't speak unless he has to, but danny says the boy is nice, and funny, and a little bit geeky.
