Zayn pressed pause on his recorder, he took a gulp from his water bottle and sighed. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't get it perfect. His voice was too scratchy, too weak, too low, too high too everything but perfect to him.

He wanted, not he needed this tape to be perfect. He was going to use his vocal ability to show the hottest boy at his school how he felt.

Zayn had always been the quiet boy in the back seat of the classroom kind of guy, but not now. That was all going to change. He was going to finally break out of his shell and get himself a boyfriend.

It couldn't be too hard could it? The girls he knew, all liked to be wooed, that's what he had to do right? This was perfect, Shane liked music, Zayn liked to sing, the plan was perfect until he kept vocally messing up every time he tried to tape his song.

It came to the point where he even threw his tape recorder across the room, waiting only a few minutes before rushing to see if it was broken. He wasn't a violent person mostly, usual just a little shy, but this was so important to him. He needed perfection.

"Zayn! Dinner!" He heard his mother call out to him. Zayn left his things exactly where they were, before running down the stairs to grab his meal. He usually took his plate back to his bedroom, but not tonight. His mother had other plans.

"Zayn, stay down here so we can have family dinner." She told him, causing him to slink down into one of the kitchen chairs and mutter curses softly to himself.

"None of that rubbish talk." She scoffed as his sisters filled the empty seats.

He looked up and told her he was sorry, as he played with his food, mashing everything with his fork, not wanting to scratch his throat.

When dinner was finally over, Zayn rushed to clean his plate before slipping back upstairs and into his bedroom. He started recording the song again, this time he was near perfection all the way through.

He placed the cassette tape back into it's case and smiled as he wrote the label. 'Shane's song' he scribbled artistically, before climbing into bed and switching his beside light off.

The following afternoon, was when he walked back into his room in tears. The day was meant to go perfectly, he was meant to give Shane the tape and he was meant to fall in love with him.

This did not happen, nor was it close to happening. Shane had taken the tape straight to the music room to play, he didn't know Zayn had slipped it into his locker, he just thought it was someone's idea of a joke. Yet who would joke using cassette tapes of all things? Most of the bone heads in their school probably couldn't remember there ever being cassette tapes.

It was all meant to happen differently, he was supposed to go home and listen to the tapes, not listen to them in first period music class.

As soon as Shane pressed play the sweet sounds of Zayn's harmonic melody filled his ears, with lyrics about love and admiration. Shane was flattered, but still he remained a 100% straight.

Shane cornered Zayn in between first and second class, thanking him for the tape, but telling him the saddened truth about his own sexuality. Zayn was devastated, running straight out of the school and into the park down the road.

It was there he found his addiction to pot.

This was six months ago, and things hadn't changed since. His parents were worried about him, they blamed it all on being gay. They tried setting him up with girls, they tried getting him drug counselling, but it was no use.

Zayn was stuck, he had nowhere to go up or down, he just needed to be loved, and not by who his parents wanted.

They decided to send him to straight camp, hoping that if he had that part of his life sorted out, the rest would fix itself, it's what they hoped for the life of their son, but only time will tell.