Lingering pt 2 | Zayne Li (Eng version)
Pairing: Zayne x Non!Mc ♥ Summary: Zayne senses that something is wrong with his wife's behavior after their vacation; perhaps it's just a matter of coincidences, but he can't help but let them influence his own hidden insecurities. Tags: Angst, Zayne groveling, Zayne begging, Non!Mc W.C.: 5.3K Notes: I don't know what I've done, guys… a lot of you asked me to write a "groveling Zayne", and that's what I tried to do. Sorry if it's messy or if the feeling doesn't come across well; it's the first time I've tried to write something like this, plus I'm racing against the clock because I'm supposed to be studying for an exam I have on Thursday, instead of writing this…
Zayne’s life seemed to consist of one promise after another.
“I promise I’ll never use my evol again.” little Zayne had thought through his uncontrollable sobs, as he rubbed his hands together frantically, until his pale, frozen skin turned red; the frost cracking under the friction, taking small pieces of his skin with it, but he didn’t seem to care, just as he didn’t care about the words of comfort his mother whispered in his ear, holding him close in her arms, her heart heavy with the pain of her little son after that innocent accident.
“Please, Zayne. Promise me,” the woman in front of him had said, her eyes red and swollen from so much crying watching him with agonizing hope; the small, reassuring smile her lips struggled to maintain faded away in the face of the young man’s silence before her. “Please, promise me you won’t keep blaming yourself. Promise me we’ll move forward, that we’ll learn to forget and carry on.” Her voice remained subdued; perhaps she was already using all her willpower just to say those words, and Zayne couldn’t help but feel remorse at making that poor woman—exhausted as she was from crying and wailing for William—try to reason with him. More out of empathy for her exhaustion than because he truly felt he had the will to keep that promise, he nodded.
Then there were those countless promises—promises that, though often fleeting for him, were a daily commitment he had to fulfill; for those people, they represented a ray of light in the darkness that weighed heavily on their hearts.
“I’ll do everything I can to save him” he’d tell the families as he tried to pass through the automatic doors of the operating room, so that someone would always call out to him or grab his arm, preventing him from moving through that entrance—which was a nightmare for them but simply a job for Zayne.
“Promise us, doctor, please.” pleaded those desperate souls in search of comfort, however fleeting and uncertain it might be.
“I promise.” he said softly, and after a nod of his head, he disappeared behind the frosted glass doors, focused and ready to fulfill that daily promise as usual, with confidence and efficiency.
Things got complicated when it was Josephine’s turn to make him swear. As he looked at that elderly woman in her hospital bed, visibly far too serene and carefree for the reason she was there, Zayne felt once again like that twelve-year-old boy, visiting that woman’s house for the first time, while she told him not to fear the future, that everything would be all right, that he just had to trust and do his best.
“If the worst happens… please,” she said with a sweet smile, “take care of her for me.” Zayne tried to object, to swear instead that he would do everything in his power to help her live as long as possible, that he wouldn’t need to stay close to Mc because she would be there in his place. “You know… by helping her, you’re helping yourself.” she finished, leaving him little choice but to stare at his own feet, trying to muster the strength needed to make that promise.
And just a few months later, he would be swearing the most important vow of his life—one that now, perhaps due to a fleeting insecurity or a true premonition, he felt he wasn’t fully keeping.
“Zayne Li, do you take Non!Mc to be your wife, and promise to be faithful to her in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, and to love and honor her until death do you part?” the priest had said in front of him, his voice sounding distant despite the closeness and amplification of the echo that reached every corner of that church, but Zayne couldn’t concentrate on it; his face was turned toward the dazzling woman at his side, his eyes drawn to her figure with such reverence that they clouded his vision with tears that dared not fall beyond his tear ducts.
He didn’t realize how much time had passed since the priest had recited those vows until his bride, standing right beside him, turned to look at him with a worried expression, fearing that her recent nightmares of Zayne regretting marrying her had come true, only to find those hazel eyes, glistening with tears, gazing at her with a longing and painfully sweet expression.
“Your turn, Zayne.” she whispered after a soft laugh. The lovesick man before her seemed to snap out of his love spell, regaining his senses and the ability to speak to take his vow, his gaze still fixed on his beloved.
“I swear.” he said, his voice choked by the lump in his throat and the pleasurable ache in his chest, as he could no longer hold back the tears of emotion, which the young woman, laughing softly at the sight of them, wiped away with her silk-gloved thumb, while the priest repeated the vow, but this time for her.
Now, sitting on the bed in that darkened room at some point in the early morning—he couldn’t tell exactly when—with his breath rising from his mouth like steam, his fingertips numb with frost, and a nervous sweat covering his entire body, and feeling his wife shiver in her sleep beside him from the sudden drop in temperature in the room, Zayne was frightened by himself; those nightmares had resurfaced from the trunk in which he had imprisoned them deep within his heart.
“Zayne? Are you okay? What’s wrong?” asked his wife beside him, her body shivering from the cold, her shoulders hunched and slightly tense to keep her body from shaking, as she rubbed her arms with her hands to warm herself, her teeth chattering while she blinked repeatedly, trying to make out Zayne’s figure in the darkness with her sleepy eyes.
“Yes…” he said in a choked voice. “I’m sorry, it was… it was a nightmare, nothing more, just a nightmare.” he whispered, more in an attempt to convince himself than to explain to his wife.
“Are you sure?” you said as your body trembled and your skin prickled beneath your pajama top, made of fabric too thin to keep you warm, while you felt around on the sheets until you found Zayne’s hand, beginning to rub it between yours to warm his skin. “You’re freezing…”
“Yeah, sorry.” he said in a barely audible whisper.
“You don’t have to apologize, honey.” you said as you brought his hand to your mouth and exhaled, but the frost was as rigid as the fears wandering through Zayne’s mind at that moment. “Wait here.” you said, getting out of bed and hurrying to the closet while hugging yourself.
You took one of the blankets—the kind you weren’t supposed to use for another two months, until fall arrived—and walked back to the bed, spreading it quickly over the sheet so you could quickly burrow under the covers, feeling the cold seep into your bones. And even though it wasn’t a good idea to get close to Zayne, since he was the snowman in the room, he needed comfort, and the cold wouldn’t stop you from giving it to him.
“Come closer to me, I’m cold.” you said as you curled up like a caterpillar closer to him.
“I’m the one causing it, remember? Maybe I should go sleep in the guest room.” he said as he made a move to kick off the covers and get out of bed, an attempt his wife instantly thwarted by grabbing his arm and pulling him toward her.
“Don’t lift the blanket—I’m cold” you complained, resting your head on his chest and wrapping your arms around him, holding him beneath you so he couldn’t escape. Zayne sighed at your stubbornness and let himself be manipulated; he could still feel your body trembling against his and the sound of your breath, ragged from the cold, as well as the chattering of your teeth; so he held you tightly, hoping that embrace would be enough to soothe the storm of emotions raging in his chest.
It wasn't the first time something like this had happened.
Zayne used to lose control of his evol due to complex or overwhelming emotions, all of which centered on his wife. It used to be something harmless, like frozen fingers or frosted glass in the heat of passion; but there were times, when it came to disturbing emotions—like the idea of losing her—that lack of control intensified, even going so far as to remind him of the incident from when he was twelve, a thought and memory that only intensified his fear and the magnitude of the damage caused by his evol.
On several occasions, when they were nothing more than a tender couple, you had woken up in the early hours of the morning after frozen hands clung tightly to your waist, a sweaty face pressed against the nape of your neck while icy, ragged breaths against your shoulder blades made your whole body bristle, even causing your skin to ache from the cold. Zayne’s nightmares would wake him up agitated, out of control, and searching for your presence, needing to know that you were there with him, that your warmth was welcome, that you hadn’t abandoned him.
Even after they were married, Zayne had still had those episodes, though they were less frequent or milder—usually after he’d had a bad day at work, following the death of a patient under his care, or when you two had argued or you’d gotten upset with him for some reason… But this time, none of those triggers seemed to have occurred.
Instead, it seemed to be the result of small coincidences, or perhaps that combined with Zayne’s own insecurities.
It had all started after they returned from their group vacation with Greyson and his wife…
“How was your vacation?” was the first thing you heard when you walked into the office—no “good morning” just straight to the gossip and the question you’d woken up that morning hoping not to have to hear.
“Good morning to you too” you replied sarcastically as you hung your purse on the coat rack next to your coat and headed to your desk.
“Well? That’s not what I asked.”
“Fine, it was fine.”
“Fine? Just fine?”
When you thought back on your vacation, it had been nice; you’d had fun; you’d spent more time with Zayne during those five days than you had in the past month, and it had been… well, just as it should be between a married couple who hadn’t been able to catch up for a month; it had felt good to have your husband by your side again—not Dr. Zayne, whom you spoke to on the phone during his shifts, nor the husband who came home tired to say “good night” and kiss you before bed, but simply Zayne, YOUR Zayne.
But… You couldn’t help but admit that the incident from the first day lingered in your chest during the first two days of your vacation, unable to be soothed even when Zayne remained indifferent and coldly polite toward Mc during their visit to the hospital the morning after the accident, arguing that she was already in the hands of professionals and out of danger, so he had no reason, nor did he want, to use his vacation time with his wife to attend to the girl, stripping her without hesitation of her status as a priority patient.
“My vacation is already interrupted enough with Greyson and his wife following us around to every activity we want to do, without me having to go to the hospital all the time.” —he had said as he absentmindedly stroked the bare skin of your back, tracing the line of your spine, his finger sinking into the crease between the muscles of your back, while you rested against his body, your head resting on his bare chest.
“But don’t you think she’ll feel lonely? Besides, she’s in a hospital in a city she doesn’t know” you said as you rested your arms on Zayne’s chest and your chin on them, watching his face, just a few inches away from him.
“She has her friends; she’s not alone.”
“But—”
“But nothing. She’s a big girl. If she knows how to fight wanderers, she can entertain herself.” he said, his eyes never leaving your lips, lost in their swelling from the activities of just a few minutes ago. You, who had spent the last few minutes thinking rationally and ignoring your true desires, couldn’t help but laugh, surprised and, though you didn’t want to admit it, slightly pleased by your husband’s choice.
“Since when have you been so cold, Zayne Li?”
“I don’t know, people tell me that so often I don’t even know when it started.” You laughed again, shaking your head as you couldn’t help the smile that spread across your lips, and a warm feeling washed over you.
“But we could go see her, at least on the last day.”
“Am I being too subtle, or do you really not realize I’m trying to start something?” he snapped, frowning and letting out an irritated sigh. “You’re ruining my plans by bringing that matter up over and over again.”
“Again?” you exclaimed, only to be quickly interrupted by Zayne’s lips on yours once more.
The rest of their vacation days had unfolded without a care in the world, but after they’d both returned to their respective routines without a hitch, there was something… something that didn’t seem to add up about your behavior, and perhaps it was because, for the first time since you’d been married, you were taking the time to reflect on your thoughts and feelings about that promise your husband was working so hard to keep.
And while it had been an isolated incident—since it was the first time in their two years of marriage that you’d felt insecure about Mc’s presence and importance in Zayne’s life—you felt that, even so, you had to address your own emotions and reflect on them.
Maybe that was why your husband felt that something unusual was going on…
Zayne had caught himself several times over the past few weeks, holding his phone with hands slightly damp from having rushed to dry them after leaving the operating room, finding his inbox empty, puzzled that his wife hadn’t sent him a message. He’d check the time on both his phone and his watch—a gift from his wife—confirming that it was time to head to work, but the message “Good morning, have a nice day. I love you” wasn’t there.
Then there were those nights when he came home, tired and seeking his wife’s warmth to feel alive again, to feel at home, and she didn’t wake up to kiss him hello as usual—something he attributed to perhaps a heavier workload that left her exhausted at night, though he also found it strange that she hadn’t mentioned it to him.
After nearly five weeks during which Zayne felt he was losing touch with his wife, feeling you growing ever more distant from him, feeling his anxiety and deep fears spreading from the depths of his heart to consume his thoughts even more each time he asked you if you were okay, if something had happened, or if he had done something wrong, you would just laugh and ask him where he’d gotten those ideas, believing that Zayne’s concerns were just casual, passing questions, unaware of how much these questions were eating away at your husband’s heart.
Until everything got worse that day. Zayne, knowing his wife would have Saturday off—since she’d marked it on the kitchen calendar—asked for special leave to take the day off, wanting to spend time with her to express his concerns and finally put them to rest, but he didn’t expect that day to turn out that way.
He was finishing up breakfast when you appeared at the top of the stairs, ready to leave, with your bag slung over your forearm while your attention was fixed on the phone in your hands.
“Oh, Zayne.” you said, surprised, stopping on the last step of the stairs, looking at him in surprise, not expecting to see him at home.
“Good morning, sweetheart. Breakfast is almost ready.” he said, smiling at you as he continued preparing your cappuccino, your favorite.
“I didn’t know you had the day off.” you said as you walked toward him.
“I didn’t have it; I ordered it. I told you yesterday when I got home, but you were too sleepy to understand what I was saying.” he said as he walked over to the table and set your cup down next to the plate of pancakes and the bowl of plain yogurt with granola and fruit.
“Oh… I’m actually about to head out…” you began, a little embarrassed to have to turn down the elaborate breakfast Zayne had taken the time to make, getting up early on his day off so they could share breakfast. Zayne frowned slightly, confused, his gaze drifting to the calendar on the fridge.
“Did I get the day wrong?” he asked, more to himself… but no, it was the right day, he confirmed, even more confused.
“No, it is today, it’s just that I’d made plans to meet my friend today; I didn’t know you’d be home.”
“Oh, I see…” he said, nodding gently as he sat down to eat breakfast.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, honey.” you said as you walked over to him to say a quick goodbye with a chaste kiss on his lips. “Thanks for breakfast, but I have to go now. I’m running late, and you know Anya doesn’t like people being late.”
“Wasn’t Anya your lawyer friend?” Zayne asked as he got up from his seat to follow you to the door.
“Yeah, her. Well, see you later.” you said with a smile, leaning in to give her another quick kiss before heading out the door. As Zayne closed the door, he realized a terrifying truth.
Anya, one of his wife’s closest friends—who had been a bridesmaid at their wedding—was a divorce lawyer.
As if all the events of the past few weeks had aligned for a common purpose, Zayne couldn’t help but feel the icy chill spreading from his chest throughout the rest of his body, creeping up toward his neck, while his coffee slowly grew cold and the breakfast on his plate seemed to mock him—mocking the time it had taken him to make it, only for him to no longer want to eat it now.
The heaviness in his chest followed him for the rest of the day, unable to be eased, not even by the warmth of his wife’s body beside him that night as they slept side by side. A cloud of insecurity and fear in his thoughts, reviving his nightmares where he saw himself alone, where his beloved rejected him and walked away from his side. Perhaps that nightmare was slowly becoming a reality, and with it, the most meaningful promise of his life was losing its purpose.
“Zayne? Is that you?” you said, startled by the silence and darkness in the house, and by what you thought was a person sitting there, motionless.
“Welcome home…” you heard Zayne say; his voice—ignoring the fact that it had come out in a low, almost whispered tone—sounded strange on its own, slightly more nasal than usual. Puzzled and a little worried by his unusual behavior, you hurriedly took off your shoes, leaving them scattered there as you set your bag on the floor and rushed to the light switch.
“Zayne, what’s going on?” you asked, trying to keep your tone calm so it wouldn’t betray your growing concern, your gaze fixed on his figure hunched forward on the sofa as you reached out to turn on the light.
“Don’t… don’t turn it on.” he pleaded, his voice tinged with desperate supplication, as he jumped up from his seat, fearing you might still reach for the switch. If there was one thing he couldn’t allow, it was for you to see the state he was in. He had spent the last three hours, ever since he’d arrived early from the hospital, lost in his thoughts, falling deeper and deeper into the consuming spiral of insecurity, fear, and despair over being abandoned.
“Honey, what’s wrong? You’re scaring me.” you said, frowning with concern, as you ignored his plea and turned on the lights.
Standing in front of the sofa, still wearing the clothes he’d worn to the hospital, Zayne stood still and silent, his gaze fixed on the floor, refusing to look you in the eyes, for he knew that if he did, he would no longer be able to keep his worries to himself; he would surrender at your feet and tell you that you had married the most insecure and pathetic man who had ever walked on earth. You remained silent as you walked slowly toward him, stopping just a few steps away, leaving a space for him and his feelings, waiting for him to open up to you. Because that’s how your relationship had always been—there would always be a space for each of you to acknowledge and respond to your own emotions before communicating them properly.
A moment passed before he felt brave enough to speak; he looked at you with his head slightly bowed from behind his eyelashes, his brow remained relaxed, but those eyes couldn’t fool you—you could see right through them perfectly. Despair, vulnerability.
“I love you—you know that, right?” he asked in a quiet voice, his gaze fixed on your eyes, which were watching him with surprise and a touch of fear. You felt completely caught off guard by Zayne’s behavior, and even more puzzled by the question that had reluctantly slipped from his lips.
You looked at him cautiously, perhaps too focused on finding a response to that situation to notice how important a positive answer was to Zayne’s anguished heart, perhaps too stunned by the raw vulnerability in your husband’s gaze as he looked into yours. Zayne’s brow furrowed and his eyebrows arched upward in sadness and disbelief at his wife’s silence, feeling his heart pounding hard in his chest, even hearing the thudding of his blood, while his hands began to grow cold at his sides.
“You don’t know?” he asked in a choked voice, more like a statement to himself that only served to break something inside him; his sad, pained eyes looked at you as if he had hurt you, or perhaps it was the other way around.
“No! Of course I know!” “You rushed to say, feeling how that look of sadness on his face hurt you. ‘It’s just that I’m a little surprised and worried about you. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Please, honey, tell me what’s going on.’”You asked—or perhaps begged; you didn’t know, you couldn’t hear yourself—you could only watch his eyes, darkened and on the verge of tears, and his saddened brow.
“Do you know that I love you? Do you know that every beat of my heart belongs to you?” he began as that annoying, stabbing pain in his chest returned; the tips of his fingers felt as if they were being pricked by something he didn’t bother to check. He could only watch the expression of concern and sadness on your face, growing increasingly blurred by his tears—tears he’d been holding back for weeks, repeating to himself that everything was fine, that nothing had changed, that it was only him whom be acting strangely, the one who seemed unable to erase the remorse from his chest, the guilt of having let a promise from the past interfere with their marriage.
You watched him this time, more agitated; a few tears slid down Zayne’s cheek as you watched in terror as that treacherous frost peeked out from beneath the collar of his black shirt. You watched him breathe more and more heavily, steam escaping from his trembling lips while you yourself began to feel the change in temperature in the room.
“Do you know that my greatest fear is that you’ll leave me? Do you know how many times you’ve left me in my dreams? You have no idea how much it hurts; it’s always the same. You start to hate me, and one day… one day your heart feels so heavy that you leave without saying goodbye… without looking back… and I… —the chill continued to creep steadily up his neck, climbing over his wrist and jaw, creeping across his face and covering his temple— “and I…” he tried to continue, but he didn’t dare, he couldn’t; his whole being kept fighting to keep that heart-wrenching truth locked away at the bottom of the trunk, hidden from himself, hidden from you, because maybe if you heard it, if you discovered it, you’d know that it was your truth, too.
Feeling your aching chest, cold stabs piercing it one after another, with the thumping of your heart echoing in your ears, you took a step toward him, seeking to comfort him, to strip him of that vulnerability you never dared to even imagine Zayne could feel, to stop those words that were hurting both of you, but he stepped back, bumping into the sofa and falling onto it, resigned and too weak to move from there, lacking the will to distance himself from you any further than he already had—not because he didn’t want to, but because he needed your closeness as much as he needed to breathe.
Head bowed and his vision clouded with tears, he sighed raggedly. There was no turning back.
“And I know I deserve it” he declared, his frozen hands resting on his knees while his body lacked the strength to stay upright. Zayne was nothing more than a man consumed by his own misery.
“Zayne…” you began, your voice a pleading call as you approached him; your hands went to his cheeks and gently guided his face so he would look at you. His eyes, slightly narrowed and shadowed by his own misery—exhausted and melancholic—focused on yours. His eyebrows remained furrowed, but it was no longer confusion that lay within them; it was despair. The gaze of a man who was about to be abandoned again, who preferred to remain silent rather than accept that he had no right to object, who could not and did not want to hurt you any more. “Oh, my love…” you said as you ran your thumbs over his cold face, wiping the tears from his cheeks “Why do you say that?
“...I just know... I know I don’t deserve you, I know you deserve better...” he said slowly, his face leaning toward your hand, his eyes closing as he couldn’t help but seek the warmth of your touch—and that was what hurt him the most— the realization that one day there would no longer be a warm touch to call home.
“I’m just a pathetic man, who was lucky enough for you to care about me. I’m nothing more than a man trying to keep his word, but every time I try to keep it, the more I try, the more I lose… and it’s so exhausting… what matters most is the first thing I lose…” His hands, unconsciously—perhaps because they needed the comfort of that closeness, or perhaps because even though his rational side told him he should let you go— he couldn’t resist his heart’s insistence on clinging to you—they reached for your legs, holding you close to him, until you were standing between his legs, letting his head fall onto your stomach, in a vague attempt to hide his own shame, to hide how much it affected him that you might walk out that door that very night.
“I’ve made so many promises, so many that I’ve failed to keep… but you… our marriage… isn’t just another one of them; it’s not simply a word I must keep. You are everything to me. I want to be with you, to continue dedicating every beat of my heart to you, every breath I take—my whole life is for you and because of you.”
“You are the owner of everything I am, and if I’ve failed to prove it, there won’t be a day that I don’t regret it, because you are everything I’ve ever been and will ever be… you have to be the one by my side… it has to be you…” Zayne lifted his face to look up at you, his chin pressed against your stomach while his arms held your body tightly against his, his fingers digging into your legs with a force he didn’t intend but couldn’t help because of his desperation. Out of fear that you would push him away for good.
“So please… please don’t leave me… I know I’m being selfish… I know this isn’t the way to act, but I don’t… I don’t know what to do anymore… I should be used to being abandoned… but you… I need you so much, so much it hurts… Please, tell me you know how much I love you, tell me you love me, please, please…” he said as he buried his cheek against your stomach “Tell me you love me…tell me we can fix this…lie to me if you have to…”
You remained silent, stunned by his words—more by the fact that the thought had crossed his mind that you might not love him than by how surprising it seemed that the great Zayne Li would ever beg. But you knew him; you knew the vulnerability and loneliness that dwelled in that fearful heart, that fragile, yearning heart he had given you unconditionally years ago.
You moved one of your hands from his cheek to his hair, brushing it away from his face, traveling all the way to the nape of his neck, while your other hand went to his jaw; the crystalline patterns on it made your fingertips tingle from its low temperature. Zayne gently loosened his grip, his hands sliding down your lower back toward the sides of your hips, clinging to your hipbones with his hands, not wanting to let you go, while his eyes closed in surrender under the warmth of your hands on his cold face. Taking advantage of the fact that he seemed to be calming down, you brought one of your knees to the sofa, on either side of his legs, sitting gently on his lap, your gaze still fixed on him.
Faced with this sudden change, he looked at you in surprise, and the relief reflected in his eyes—given how close you were, and how hurt he seemed to have felt—made you feel guilty, like when you accidentally, through an inevitable but unintentional mistake, step on your poor cat’s tail, when all it was trying to do was rub against your leg to show you affection.
“I do love you, Zayne.” you began softly, in an intimate whisper, a confession that belonged only to the two of you. He let out a ragged sigh, his Adam’s apple bobbing roughly as he tried to get rid of the lump in his throat; his forehead fell against yours, staying there for a few seconds before his lips briefly touched yours, only to leave them a second later to kiss your cheek, your jaw, and when he finished descending to your neck, his face paused there, seeking refuge against your skin, his hands wrapping around your waist once more.
“Even if it’s just for tonight… tell me you still love me… if I can only have you tonight… then hold me tight and don’t let me go… so I can remember it forever.” he pleaded, his face buried in the crook of your neck, his icy breath sending shivers down your spine, his hands clinging tightly around your waist, clutching the fabric of your shirt between his fists.