And with each mile

[teamzaylor]

CHAPTER 13: STARES

Rating: NC-17
Genre: Zaylor / Hancest
Pairing: Zac & Taylor
Credits & many Thanks to: Honor @beyondthethorns
About the story: Zac & Taylor's relationship broke up when they got caught kissing by the press and their career were over in a split of a second. To continue a normal life and to take a break from his brother, Taylor starts to study at a College in London but the long distance between them can't stop their feelings for each other.




"Sorry," I gave him a weak grin.

I began to wonder how he’d managed such a complicated sentence in his drunken state, but I was caught off guard when he wrapped me in his arms and pulled me close to him, giving me a tight hug. I’ve always been a big hugging person, but Zachary never was. While I thrive off of physical contact with people, Zac is pretty reserved about touching other people. The fact that he was hugging me so much made me know that I was special to him. Really special.

"Sucks that you’re in love with a crazy drunk, huh?" Zac giggled, his breath warm against my neck. "I’m sorry."

"Don’t apologize. I know how you are."

I felt Zac’s chest inhale and exhale heavily against me. "Yeah but… you’ve never seen me this drunk before."

"I’ve heard stories," I smiled. "And that’s not true, actually. Remember when I was 15 and Mom and Dad went away for the weekend? Remember how we locked ourselves in our room with a bottle of kaluah? We were really drunk then."

Zac laughed and pulled away from me, looking down at me affectionately. "You were throwing up all night."

"It was the first alcohol I’d ever had!" I defended myself.
I watched as Zac carelessly pulled his shirt off and tossed it towards his open suitcase.

"Well it was my first time too and I wasn’t running back and forth to the bathroom every point two seconds!" Zachary laughed, clutching the bed to stabilize himself.

"I was skinnier than you then. I had a low tolerance."

"It’s not much higher now," he teased. "Mr. I had three drinks and I’m done."

"Four."

"Four," he corrected himself and allowed himself to shamelessly stand there and stare at me. I tried to keep my eyes on his face and not his bare chest. "I love you even if you are a shitty drinker," he finally conceded.

"That’s big of you, Zachary."

"You sleeping again over…? I mean…" he giggled at his drunk talk. "You know."

To be honest, I hadn’t been planning on it. Sleeping in a bed with Zachary was almost too tempting for me. Laying next to him, I wanted to reach over and wrap my arms around his bare shoulders and hold on for forever. I wasn’t sure if it was healthy for me to want him as badly as I did, so I was planning on making sure he was okay and then going back over to my dorm.

"I wasn’t… planning on it."

Zac frowned. "Why?"

"I don’t know," I shrugged, sitting down on the edge of the bed and looking at the floor. "Class tomorrow?"

"That didn’t stop you last night."

"And I paid for it this morning," I gave him a weak smile, but he wasn’t buying it.

"When do you have to be at… what time is… your first class?" he rubbed his eyes tiredly.

I didn’t want to say it because then he would really know I was making up excuses for not staying over, but I wasn’t about to sit there and lie to him. He didn’t fly to London for my bullshit afterall.

"Eleven."

"Eleven!?" he frowned. "Taylor… do you just not want to stay here? I’ll sleep on the floor if you want."

"It’s not that," I said quickly. I didn’t want to give him the idea that I didn’t want to sleep in the same bed with him. I wanted too almost too badly. That was the problem.
"I guess I’ll stay."

He sat down next to me and sighed. "No. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to."
I’d clearly hurt his feelings. It was rare that Zachary and I hurt each other’s feelings because we were always so good about making sure we weren’t doing things that might potentially hurt the other person. We cared too much about each other to recklessly risk hurting each other. I felt horrible that he was sitting there looking hurt and that I was the reason for it.

"I want to," I looked over at him and offered him a genuine smile. "Trust me, I want to."

We were quiet as we each undressed for bed and crawled under the covers. This time, I stripped down to my boxers like Zac- just like we had when we were younger. It felt strange to crawl into his bed nearly naked, but at the same time the idea excited me. I just hoped I wouldn’t become too excited. When we laid down, he laid on his stomach and looked at me, and then took my hand immediately like the night before.

"Do you feel better?" I asked him. It was strange. He did seem less drunk since we had gotten back into the room by ourselves, but somehow I suspected his head was still spinning.

"I feel pretty drunk," he confessed with a laugh. "But I don’t feel like I’m going to puke… I don’t think."

"Whatever you do Zac, don’t puke on me."

"Oh, that’s not a turn on for you?" he winked and then fell into a drunken fit of laughter.

He looked so cute with his long messy hair and ridiculous laugh, laying next to me and grinning. I couldn’t help but think he was a cute drunk… when he wasn’t making a scene of himself in bars and trying to act like the tough guy that we both knew he wasn’t. He was so down to earth around me. He was sweet and sensitive when it was just the two of us, but whenever we went anywhere he wrapped this shield around himself-a shield of insults and aggression.

"You’re too far away," he whined. "Come closer."

I slid closer to him and he slid closer to me so our sides were touching. Even the most innocent touch from Zachary could excite me. I had never felt that way with anyone else in my entire life. Oh god, I had tried. I went on this one date with this guy about two years prior. His name was Craig. He was really smart and very handsome. He was Zac’s age. He even asked me about Zac instead of dancing around the subject like everyone else did and he seemed to respect my former relationship. I appreciated that about him. Everything about Craig seemed perfect. We went to dinner at one of the fancier restaurants in Tulsa and then went back to his brand new apartment.
I explained to him that I wasn’t looking for sex and he respected that too, so we sat on his patio drinking coffee and looking at the stars. It was all rather cliché, but the scene itself was pretty damn romantic. I should have liked Craig. He was good for me, nice, and conversation was never boring. Eventually we slid our chairs together and he draped his arm around me. I looked for a rise in my stomach- a stopping of my heart, but none of that ever happened. Nothing felt good about it- in fact, it almost felt bad because it wasn’t Zac. I sat there willing myself to feel a connection to Craig because I wanted to date someone like him instead of wasting my time thinking about my younger brother who was running around like an idiot in Los Angeles, but it just didn’t happen. When I left I offered him nothing more than a peck and then never returned his calls.

Laying there next to Zachary with his skin barely touching mine just felt so right. No matter how hard the media hit us I've never regretted a second with Zachary.
When I looked over at him, I noticed he had fallen asleep within seconds. All those bottles of Double Diamond must have really knocked him out. I grinned and whispered his name to make sure he wasn’t just resting his eyes, but when he didn’t move for another five minutes I decided he was definitely asleep. I tried to sleep too, but my mind was spinning with thoughts. I was thinking about Zac and me- thinking about us and if it was possible that we could exist as us again in the world that we lived in. Sometimes I wanted to take him and fly us out to a deserted island together where we could live by ourselves without anyone giving us a hard time. But we loved our family too much, and although Zac wasn’t acting like it lately, we were social people.

"I don’t feel all that drunk anymore," Zachary’s groggy voice surprised me as I was laying there thinking.
I glanced over at the clock. He’d been asleep for a whole hour.

"That’s good, although I’m sure you still are."

"Actually, I don’t think I’m drunk at all," he giggled and I rolled my eyes at his denial.

"Why do you drink so much?" I frowned, looking into his eyes. I really wanted to know. When we were younger, drinking was just something we did for fun every once in awhile- something we did because we knew we weren’t supposed to. But now he was grown up and by what I’d heard from friends out in Los Angeles, he never drank without getting drunk. I couldn’t figure out what the appeal was, I guess.

"I told you that before. I didn’t know what to do without you, so I drank."

"But I’m here now… and you still drank a lot tonight."

"In Los Angeles I used to drink way more than that. Tonight was nothing."

"It still seemed like a lot…"

"I guess," Zac shrugged.

"So… why?" I repeated. I wanted to know if I wasn’t offering him enough. What was still causing him to drink? What was I doing wrong? I wanted to fix it.

"I guess… I guess I just got used to drinking when I went out because if I don’t drink, I feel like everyone is staring at me and I can’t relax and have a good time. I guess drinking makes the stares go away," he said. He seemed a lot more sobered up having slept for a bit.

"Not everyone is staring at you, Zac…"

"Don’t lie to me, Tay. Maybe not over here so much, but there isn’t a soul in this world that didn’t see those pictures of us."

"I’m sure most of the Amish didn’t."

He rolled his eyes but cracked a tight smile. "Well, besides the Amish, who I don’t often see at night clubs anyway, everyone else saw them. They might not always recognize you because you changed a lot, Tay. You look different.. your hair is a little darker and shorter now and you’re way bigger than you used to be. You even don't look like a girl anymore."

"Hey!" I said, clapping a hand over his stomach.
I feigned an offended look but couldn’t help but crack a smile too.

"I'm really serious about this," he promised. "I like your change."

"Zac… you can walk around and half of the people don’t even recognize you...

"Tay-"

"Let me finish what I’m trying to say." It hurt too much to admit all this, but maybe we needed to. "I look almost the same as I did two years ago. It doesn’t matter how I cut my hair, it’s still blond and people still recognize me. I was almost grown up when it happened and so I didn’t change much. No matter where I go… people always see me as Taylor Hanson… Taylor Hanson the sexual predator."

"That's ridiculous. It just shows how unaware they are!"

"It’s true. Don’t act like the media didn’t have a field day writing stories about how I probably forced you into sexual activities and stole your innocence from you."

That was exactly how it was. I was the older one so I automatically had to bear the full responsibility. I remember even reading an article that said something like Zac was traumatized from years of being seduced by his sick older brother. The things people thought that knew but actually had no clue about… it was incredible how many ignorant people there were in the world and how wrong the media was.

"You’re seen as the victim, and I’m seen as the child molester. I hate it, Zac, because they have no clue. I’m not a fucking bad guy and that’s how everyone sees me! Sometimes I think even Mom and Dad see me like that! We both know Isaac blames me. I get so sick of being blamed… blamed for something where no one should be blamed. How can you blame someone for love? I guess I decided that people can look at me however they want and I don’t care as long as I know that you love me.

He reached out his hand and touched my back.
I suddenly felt so broken and sad about all of it so I did the first thing that came to mind.
I leaned in, and I kissed him. It was brief and gentle, but it still caught both of us off guard. I never expected that I’d be the first one to kiss him after all of these years. Zachary is far more aggressive than me and besides, he’s my younger brother so it was only natural for me to take cues from him. But looking at Zac laying there, the only person in the world who  understands me, I just realized how much I loved him. I loved everything about him. Even the things that made me really angry and frustrated with him, maybe those were the things I loved the most because they made him Zac and not Craig or guys just like him- guys who seemed perfect but simply weren’t perfect for me.

The first thing Zac did when I kissed him was smile. It wasn’t a grin but a content, relaxed smile. The second thing he did was whisper, "I knew you wanted to get me drunk so you could take advantage of me…"

I smiled because he was the most original person I knew and because I loved him like that. I smiled because his response was perfect- perfectly Zachary.

He leaned in and kissed me again. The kiss was almost identical to mine- gentle and innocent. When he pulled away he just squeezed my hand and sighed quietly.

"Night Zac," I told him. It wasn’t that I wanted to stop talking really, it’s just that I really wanted to lay there in bed and replay the kiss in my head over and over and over again, and I was afraid if we said anymore I might forget it. “Just… I’m ready to fall asleep. So goodnight, okay?”

He looked at me for a moment before his face eased into a sleepy smile. "Night Tay."

Comments

[elizabeth-ald.livejournal.com]

So sweet and heart-wrenching. Poor Taylor. I like this calm and sweet Zac a lot better, being there to comfort Taylor in his mess of emotions for what they've both dealt with.. :-)

[iwontbeafool.livejournal.com]

Yap, this is so sweet..! I feel bad for Taylor for being accused of a child molester. It must have been difficult for him. I admire the way he handled the situation though, at least he tried to stand up and fix his life while all along he also felt lost and lonely without Zac. On the other hand, Zac had a different way of handling his miseries, they both became so lost without each other. I'm happy that Zaylor found each other again, I hope for them to stay together in spite of their differences.<3 <3 <3

[zacgirl1.livejournal.com]

Awwww so sweet. They are so perfect together! I really hope they fight for their love and make their relationship work somehow.

Update soon please :)

[teamzaylor.livejournal.com]

Yay glad you liked the Chapter! :D I promise I'll update the story every day or every second day.

Chapter 14 is online! Enjoy & leave Love ♥ :-)