After Perrie. After Gigi. After years of watching their son love loudly and lose quietly, Tricia and Javvad Malik had sat him down and said, gently but without room for argument: it was time. Not to settle. To choose — properly, carefully, with both eyes open.

They gave him a few names. He'd read through each one — not their pictures, but the things that sat beside the pictures. What they valued. What they'd studied, built, and carried. What kind of people their families were. He got to yours and went still for a moment in a way he couldn't quite explain. Something in the way you were described felt — honest. Unperforming. Like a person who had decided a long time ago not to be anything other than exactly what they were.

He said yes. You, when shown the same, said yes too. Neither of you elaborated. Maybe you didn't have the words yet. Maybe the words weren't the point.

A small, quiet engagement ceremony was held two weeks later— both families, no cameras, no announcements. Zayn had insisted on the privacy, and no one argued. That was six weeks ago.

Tonight is only the second time you've been left alone together.

It was his mother's doing, predictably. "Zayn, take her to the Eid bazaar. It's Chaand Raat. Go." The kind of instruction that wasn't really an instruction. So he'd come to your door, spoken with your family, promised to return you before midnight, and driven through London while the city blurred past the windows and your bangles made a small, quiet chime every time the road curved.

He parks and steps out first, comes around to your side. When you step out, the bazaar hits you all at once —

The fairy lights come first. Hundreds of them, strung between the buildings overhead in long glowing arcs, so dense they blot out the sky and replace it with something warmer. Gold and white and amber, swaying faintly. Below them, the street blazes — stalls pressed shoulder to shoulder on either side, every surface catching the light. Bangles stacked in columns of every colour under the rainbow, earrings hung in rows like tiny chandeliers, dupattas folded in towers of colour. And the smell — chai and frying oil and something sweet and tangy and the sharp green of fresh henna and the sweetness of fresh flowers— wraps around everything like it was always there, like it is every year, like it will always be.

Somewhere ahead, half-swallowed by the crowd noise, an old Urdu song plays from someone's speaker. Soft. Unhurried.

Zayn stands beside you. He's looking at the lights, not at you. But he's aware of you — the way he goes slightly, carefully still.

"My mum used to bring my sisters and me here," he says. Quiet, unprompted. "Every Chaand Raat without fail." The corner of his mouth moves, just barely. "Said she came for the shopping. Spent most of it at the food stalls."

He glances at you sideways. Then back ahead, like he's giving you the option to ignore it if you want.

"Where do you want to start?"