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On their very first flight together after the competition, Liam doesn’t hear a word of the safety protocol because Zayn’s hand, still a little unfamiliar and definitely already perfect, just like the rest of him, is clutching his beneath the armrest.
+
It’s the middle of February and it feels like there is nowhere in the world colder than Des Moines, Iowa. Shallow exhales are visible against the starry night’s sky and the winter wind bites at the spaces between their sleeves and leather gloves and Liam can’t look away from the pink flush staining Zayn’s cheeks.
Zayn catches him watching. The corner of his chapped, bitten raw lips quirks up, the breeze blows his fringe into his eyes, and the high beams cast eyelash shadows onto the soft skin of his cheekbones, and Liam’s never seen someone so incidentally beautiful. Zayn cocks his head like let’s get out of here and forget the world and Liam wants to tug him behind the bus, shove him up against the wheel and—
(not yet)
“I hate you,” Louis says, prodding him in the shoulder until Liam looks away. “I have never hated anyone this much before in my entire life, and I’ve met the Wanted.”
Harry snorts with that hideous beanie he bought last summer tugged all the way down to the tip of his nose. “Overreaction, Lou,” he says, tilting his head all the way back until they can see his wide green eyes in the darkness. “It’s just an hour flight.”
“An hour flight without Liam,” he scowls, and Louis has always been a bit adamant with the dramatics. “Think of all the pre-show rituals—”
“We don’t have those,” Niall interrupts.
“— the view of the American countryside—”
A bark of laughter is muffled into Harry’s scarf. “That we’ve seen a thousand times.”
Louis rolls his eyes and stomps all the way to the wheel-up staircase. “Scratch that, I hate absolutely all of you. Enjoy peak hour traffic and petrol breaks.”
And Liam knows that it sounds ridiculous, choosing an eight-wheeler with too-small beds and bad water pressure over the promise of leg room and Zayn on the jet, but he just wants silence and a pillow for four hours.
He doesn’t say that, though, slings an arm around Harry’s shoulders instead and says, “Love you, Tomlinson.”
Harry whispers we love you too into the shell of his ear (and that’s always been his little quirk, like he can’t help but echo it, even when it’s from a stranger, even when they’re at an awards show, even when they’re watched by the whole world) while Niall kisses his other cheek. Zayn hasn’t stopped grinning and Liam still wants to lick it off.
They wander on board huddled together for warmth until it’s just him and Zayn and the space between them, and it’s so, so easy to step a little closer, fist his hand softly in the collar of Zayn’s jacket and press their foreheads together.
“Remember to close the blinds,” Zayn whispers, with the wind and engines roaring around him, “you know how the streetlights make you dizzy.”
Liam grins and he wants to press forward, kiss him, wrap them up in a cocoon of blankets for the next three days. “Remember to move the armrest so you don’t get restless.”
The driver is knocking impatiently on the window and he needed to leave twenty minutes ago to get to the venue on time, but there’s nothing quite as important as adding, “Are we still on for tonight?”
Zayn nods until their noses brush together. “Can’t wait,” he says, and reaches up to thumb at the woven bracelet on Liam’s wrist they bought together in Japan and then he’s boarding, black jeans and leather jacket and dark eyes such a contrast against the remnants of snow all around. He turns to wink over his shoulder and Liam really doesn’t want to wait.
He stays until he can see them settled into the cabin before climbing onto the bus. The bed by the window is cold, but it’s Zayn’s favourite and if he sits up straight, he can see the plane and Louis waving from the door.
There’s a tiny space where the window’s propped open and he wedges it further apart, just in time to hear Louis yell, “I hope your bus freezes up!”
He laughs and watches as Harry scolds them from the cabin. “Yeah?” he says, and he’s never felt so alive. “Well, I hope your damned plane crashes.”
+
(He and Zayn have been an almost for a year too long when they’re locked in a penthouse together.
“We are sick to death of the unresolved sexual tension,” Harry says sternly – as sternly as Harry Styles can manage – from the other side of a mahogany door while Niall and Louis snicker into the peephole.
“Besides,” Louis says, and Liam hates the smugness in his voice, “things are all heading in—”
Liam groans. “Don’t—”
“It was a good weekend,” Zayn says patiently, like he has a dozen times before, while Louis hammers out a rhythm on the door, “but we promised no more—”
“— One Direction,” Louis finishes, so damn gleeful, “so consider this an expressway.”
Zayn’s a body too close –that’s always the way it is, isn’t it, a hand on the small of his back, lips catching dry on his neck when they’re on stage, waking up tangled together in a bed plenty big – and a laugh brushes over Liam’s bare neck. He flushes but the tattooed arm pressed against the door has goosebumps, so he doesn’t feel too embarrassed. “Are you installing an external deadlock?”
Liam makes a helpless noise at the beat of words against his pulse and, through the door, Niall laughs a ‘pathetic, the lot of you’ with absolutely no malice. They could fight back or just sleep off the post-show adrenaline, but there isn’t enough gravitational pull in the universe to drag him away from this.
The suite is too big and too empty and still feels so, so theirs. He twists on Zayn’s axis to grin into his neck and follows him through the room, kicking off their shoes and sweaters without stepping back from each other.
They end up in the bathroom, inexplicably, with the waterfall showerhead and porcelain sink and—
“Oh,” Zayn says, and Liam doesn’t realise how close he is until he looks up and can count those damn eyelashes. The only light in the bathroom is a blue flame fireplace and he doesn’t even pretend to hide the way his heart races like mad at the look in Zayn’s eyes. “You’re so – the tub is – incredible, hey?”
Liam grins at all the insinuations between the words and stares (even though it hurts, sometimes, never quite enough to force him to turn away) at the embarrassed smile on pretty pink lips.
The bath is spectacular, when he twists to stop from kissing Zayn all over in the middle of a dark bathroom in a city they won’t remember. It’s pressed against the wall overlooking the city and has high glass walls and curved ends and the sight of it settles this marrow-deep sense of exhaustion in his bones.
He catches the longing in Zayn’s expression and hip-checks him closer. “You could take one,” he offers, as casually as he can at the thought of Zayn and tattoos and glass tub. “We can hook up your iPod and it’ll be like you’re back home.”
There are two dozen unlit candles scattered across the marble floor and a bottle of lube by the sink and three arrows drawn onto the mirror in the red lipstick from Halloween last year, but he bypasses those in favour of the rose oil and bubble bath mix. He shoves them at Zayn and cheats his reflexes, sneaking a hand into Zayn’s front pocket to steal his phone.
Fiddling with the dock is difficult – two thirds because of his racing heart and half because of the mirror and wholly because of Zayn – but Daft Punk comes on shuffle and he exaggerates the hitch of his hips until he hears that relaxed laugh from behind him.
He turns around and Zayn’s just frozen, shirt bundled around his forearms and jeans low on his hips, and Liam forces himself to look up, shoves him teasingly towards the half-full tub at the amused smirk he sees last. It’s not harsh or rough by any means but Zayn follows his momentum and slips backwards into the bath, half-dressed and dishevelled with dark circles around his eyes and the biggest grin on his face.
Through the water, Zayn’s legs spread, and it’s not for hours yet that Liam will realise it’s a distraction tactic for when Zayn fists a hand in the front of his jeans and tugs him in. He emerges spluttering out laughter and settles his back against Zayn’s chest and they trade lyrics and lace their fingers together until they’re ready to talk.
Liam leans back and Zayn’s stubble grazes against his cheek and he never wants to move. “I think you’re the best person on this whole damn planet,” he admits, and the city lights shine just for them.
Arms curl around his torso and he feels the hitch in Zayn’s breath before he hears it. “I never love the world as much as when I’m with you,” he says, and softer – braver – he adds, “Next weekend in Chicago, there’s a midnight screening of the new Thor film after our show so maybe—”
Liam nods before Zayn’s happy, embarrassed laugh can ruin the sentence and they stay in the bath until the water runs cold, listing off Stan Lee’s appearances as their lips brush against free skin.)
+
The bus is a little colder without four over-affectionate bodies pressed close on a thin mattress but he tries to compensate, curls up under Zayn’s blanket with his face buried in his pillow, wearing Harry’s sweater and drinking coffee from Louis’ cup and rewatching Mad Men on Niall’s laptop, and it almost feels like home.
(almost.)
It’s pitch black as the edges of Chicago blur past his window. He doesn’t pick up his phone, not even when Louis calls a half dozen times—
(“I hate talking on the phone,” he said, that very first time he’d cornered Liam just off stage as he punched in his number and in three hours, Liam will hate himself for not answering the second, fifth, eighth time it rang)
— and people always talk about this sense of premonition but it’s not until he looks up as they pull into the stadium that he knows something’s wrong.
Their new security guard, an eighteen year old from Germany who’s built like a brick with a voice like an angel and a vernacular like a soldier, is standing by the door. He doesn’t move when Liam grins goofily at him upside down and it’s only then he thinks—
oh.
“What?” Liam asks, and he hates how scared he sounds, hates the way his heart throbs, hates the way he looks over his shoulder and fists a hand in the sheets like the ache in his chest can materialise into the four of them. “Did they hide in the airport again because Harry loves the baggage carousel and we sat on one for an hour when we were in Berlin last summer, so security should really check—”
Elliot – who tells them a different name every week because it makes Louis cackle and, god, Louis – holds out an iPad and Liam can’t look, flickers his gaze between the windows and Niall’s laptop and where his phone is, under last night’s clothes and this morning’s sweatpants. “Liam,” he says patiently, carefully blank, and no—
“Or has Zayn lost his voice,” he says, and there’s something thick and scary building just under his tongue, “he always forgets to warm up before a show and I bet he’s gargling herbal tea backstage, even though he hates the way it tastes—”
He looks at the screen with this newfound tremor chasing his blood, until it’s not just his fingers shaking, but his legs, his stomach, his lungs. Niall’s always been an enthusiast for the instantaneous – cannot stand the anticipation, pulls off bandaids and tears open the award nominations for the Brits without a second thought, but Liam hadn’t taken a leap of faith until that day in Wellington when he saw Zayn waiting at the bottom.
His first thought is that looks a lot like and his second is—
He doesn’t have a second thought.
+
A lie, really, because it’s more accurate to say he doesn’t stop thinking, because the caption says none found and the plane is torn in half like in Lost and he hates that connection because the five of them watched all six seasons last year and he doesn’t want to taint that memory of sharing a hotel bed, fighting for pillow space, Zayn, not if—
It would be easier if it was his family, he thinks, and hates himself for even suggesting that but it’s almost the truth; his parents didn’t drag him around the world and abandon him in Chicago at nineteen with a grainy surveillance photo of half a plane and dirty dishes under the sink
And there’s only a one in ninety million chance of dying in a plane crash but they’ve beaten the odds before, and he’s a conflicting litany of maybe and never and can’t and won’t and he never understood ‘falling apart’ until he realised that maybe no one would be around to fix him, and there’s just no oxygen left in a world where they’re—
+
I hope your damned plane crashes.
+
“Pull over,” he says, and he hasn’t sounded quite so young or quite so old since I cried a river over you.
Elliot looks like he’s trying to force out pity. Liam doesn’t deserve it. “There are people around,” he says, but Liam’s halfway down the too-steep stairs in bare feet and clutching the bands around his wrist – from the Leeds they went to together, the Radio City Music Hall tour with Harry last Christmas, the beaded bracelets they’d made each other at Zayn’s cousins’ birthday – and he can’t hear a fucking thing over the roar of traffic.
The icy wind bites at his cheeks and he used to find solace, outside, in that first breath of fresh air after a show, but not now. Now all he can look at is the crowd, silent, for once in their fucking life, and he hates the way some of them are crying, as if they know more about each of them than a two word label brainstormed in a glass office, like they’re the ones who might—
have
— lost something.
He’s hunched over and gasping for air when a hand fists in his collar. “You’re okay,” she says, and when he looks up it’s the sound engineer with red hair and a soft spot for Niall and steely eyes to anchor him. “You’re okay and they’re okay and I will take you wherever you need to go.”
+
Her name’s Blair and she turns off the radio when the Beach Boys play before he can even ask. She drives faster than the speed limit and throws his phone into the back seat when strangers won’t stop ringing and drops his wrist with a hard pinch to the underside when they pull up to the scene, and he can’t think of anyone who’d handle him better.
(wrong, because he would kill for four boys teasing him for overreacting and wrestling him into his seatbelt)
It’s Louis he finds, cross-strapped to the stretcher with one of his feet boxed up and a wild look in his eyes. His eyelashes flutter in that way that distracts from the tear streaks below when he sees Liam and he says ‘hey, I think you’re psychic’ before Liam can even think an apology.
“They pulled Harry and Zayn out a half-hour ago,” he says, and he looks so exhausted, sweat pooling in the hollow of his throat and hair shoved messily off his forehead and the grimace of his lips etched bone-deep. Liam can’t look away from his taped up foot, the shards of bone protruding through the skin, the wires threaded into his forearm. “They can’t get Niall—”
And he stumbles, then, but Louis grips his arm to keep him up, even when the jolt of pain makes them both flinch. “He wouldn’t let me help,” he says, and then, a little more urgently, “he’s locked in the pit with the pilot and Liam you need to get him out, I need to yell at him and the last thing I said was—”
Louis’ chest is heaving with these shallow breaths which make Liam dizzy and he has a dozen things he wants to say over and over, until they thicken the air like the smoke from the wreck.
The paramedics are making all these soothing sounds and it’s only when Louis pulls his hand away bloody that Liam realises his own forearm’s bleeding, ugly shallow scratches all over his tattoos.
He manages a smile and finds the words, just for Louis. “We’ll be there, Lou.”
Whatever is coiled tight around Louis’ spine relaxes, just a little, like it did the first time Liam hugged him back.
“We’re going to be alright,” Louis says, almost a promise, like ‘eleven months isn’t that long’ and ‘we’re going to make it’ and ‘he’s going to be infatuated with you too’ and Liam believes him, because he always has, and Louis hasn’t let him down yet.
+
It’s an hour and a half later and Liam doesn’t realise he’s walking forward until he’s thigh deep in ice-cold water that stains his jeans dark, and he’s never really understood staring at a trainwreck until he realises he can’t look away.
Niall’s limp in the space blanket wrapped around his shoulders but his eyes fly open as he’s carried past and when the paramedics strap him to the stretcher in the ambulance, he squeezes the very tips of Liam’s fingers like a hello.
+
One of the doctors – Dr. Howard, a pretty blonde he’d accidentally called nurse on the way in and had received a lecture on Merit Ptah and Title IX and South London Hospital for Women and Children before he could apologise – sits on the window ledge beside him and wraps a cotton bandage around his forearm.
“Sorry,” he says, while she fixes the edges, “I’m just – I really wasn’t thinking.”
Something in her expression softens and she adjusts the taping until the ache under his skin disappears. “Has a doctor talked to you about them yet?”
She shows him x-rays and explains all the monitors and starts talking in this foreign language about infection rates and intravenous fluids and post-sedation disorientation and Harry’s four fractured ribs and the three bones in Louis’ foot and Niall’s hypothermia until it blurs, and all he hears afterwards is post traumatic stress disorder.
He blinks hard at the window to Louis’ room and turns to look at her. “So do I – stay? What do I do to fix them when—”
He cuts himself off at the look in her eyes, just in time to hear her say, “I meant you, Mr. Payne.”
+
He doesn’t sleep – doesn’t think he’ll sleep ever again – but he dreams. It’s nothing identifiable and it’s blurred over with something cancerous (clouds, Zayn will tell him, months from now when they talk about it, pressed close under the blankets, I see them too) and when he opens his eyes, all he can remember is who would die first in the hunger games do you ever want to murder each other who-would-you-leave-to-drown?
When he lurches out of the hard chair he stole from the waiting room, gasping and maybe crying a little bit, Zayn’s watching from across the dark room. His skin is a ghostly shade of pale and his right shoulder and forearm is covered in bandages, but when his spare hand tugs off the oxygen mask to smile at Liam, he’s never looked so beautiful.
“I ruined our date,” he says, and Liam’s first thought is no and his second is where would you live if you had the whole world to choose from and his third is next to you.
He makes a helpless sort of noise he hopes means shut it and he wants to kiss him. He wants to crawl onto the good side of the bed and hinge Zayn’s strong jaw open and kiss him until those bitten-raw lips push thoughts about drowning in bathtubs and falling out of the clouds from his head.
But he doesn’t.
Can’t.
Instead, he wriggles a hand between the cold metal bars of the bed and wraps his fingers around Zayn’s bare ankle, kicked out from under the coarse hospital blanket, like he does every time he falls asleep. The bolt tattoo by the heel has faded – just like Liam’s – but when he traces it with his thumb, he can still feel the five sharp edges Louis had etched into Zayn’s skin with a manic grin at each of them, to the tune of that one Beatles’ song he can’t remember, in that one hotel in a city they’ve barely seen.
“I’m really glad you’re okay,” he says, an understatement in comparison to the half dozen things he really should tell Zayn and can’t, because the words get caught on something monstrous under his tongue every time he tries. And when Zayn makes a noise that sounds like a laugh but definitely doesn’t feel like one, he repeats it.
“Liam,” he says, breathless, now, and Liam wants to find the oxygen line and press it back to his lips or he might just kiss him instead, and that’s not how he wants to remember it, doesn’t want their beginning to be with dry lips and tears in his eyes and Harry unconscious a few steps away.
(or with this ache behind his teeth and in his chest and buzzing under his skin, something that tastes like guilt and bites like madness and feels like shattered glass)
And he thinks Zayn knows but can’t be sure, because every time Liam looks up he stares at the bandaged arm, instead.
Zayn wriggles his free fingers under the blankets like a come close and a hello and a please all at once. “Liam,” he repeats, and he sounds nervous and uncertain and then it’s the biggest non-decision Liam’s made since so will the band stay together? as he climbs over the rail, curls around the curve of Zayn’s ribs. The blankets are thick between Zayn’s skin and Liam’s mouth but that doesn’t quite stop him from pressing his I’m sorry to Zayn’s waist.
They don’t talk and Zayn’s drowsy and weightless from the PCA and when he lurches, blood staining his bandages before Liam can stop it.
“Niall,” Zayn urges, eyes flickering from the door to Liam and back again with this combination of pain and chaos under his skin, “did you—”
He presses Zayn back onto the bed as gently as he can with a strong hand on his chest and a softer one on his bad arm until it comes away red. “They’re fine,” he says and he doesn’t say the ways they’re not, the ways he’s not. “Everyone’s sleeping. You, on the other hand, just tore your stitches.”
“How do you even know that?” he asks, almost a laugh, and later Zayn will bury his face in Liam’s neck and bite onto his collarbone to stop from watching as the cuts are sewn together.
+
Sometime after sunrise, with the sky a heavy blue and the whole world waking up around them, Harry blinks hard a half-dozen times and then over-dilated green eyes are watching Liam owlishly across the room.
They sweet-talk Dr. Howard until she lets out a sigh and calls in nurses to push their beds close so Liam can sit on both mattresses and feed them ice chips while Harry and Zayn call their parents.
Harry’s still drowsy and gasping for air when his mum hangs up, even as he grins lazily at the two of them. “So,” he says, and Liam automatically glances at the monitors, “you two snogged yet?”
And Zayn freezes but it’s not the way Elliot was still when he told him about the plane, or the still Niall was when he came in, and Liam can handle Zayn not wanting to kiss him if he’s still so alive under his fingers.
“What?” he says, instead of not yet, instead of not here or not now, and Zayn relaxes against his side.
Harry frowns and opens his cracked lips to add something, but one of the interns tuts from the hallway. “Oxygen, Mr. Styles,” he scolds, and Zayn sniggers until he adds, “you too, Mr. Malik.”
Zayn buries his cheek in the crook of Liam’s neck and mumbles out something about a favour while Harry’s fussed over by a nurse. Liam says anything because Zayn could ask for privacy or a hug or those cupcakes from Sweden or the whole world and the answer would always be yes
yes
yes.
Zayn breathes slow against his collarbone and fumbles for the discarded mask. “Just don’t check your voicemail for a few days.”
+
Louis and Niall wake up and it takes four doctors and an orthopaedic surgeon and a lung specialist but they’re all allowed into the same room the next afternoon. They fiddle with the television in the corner until they find North by Northwest and Liam turns away, watches the four of them, instead.
+
The world stops, for a while, just for them, but then there’s a press release and a dozen different meetings with specialists and lawyers, because that’s something they need to consider, now, and a hotel room Liam’s barely in and five phones to answer to and there’s just no time to sleep and too much time to sit in rooms crowded with machines instead of his boys and it feels like before, like he needs to force what comes naturally to the others and he can’t take the way Niall reaches for him or the way the Blair starts watching him eat or the way his mum asks if he’s seeing anyone for the insomnia, liam, it classifies as insomnia—
+
He and Louis are four floors up in radiology for another x-ray of his foot and that grimace Liam will never, ever, ever forget is slowly grinding into something bearable. He’s still on more morphine than the other three of them combined but he laughs more than Harry, talks more than Niall, moves more than Zayn and smiles a hell of a whole lot more than Liam.
They’re in the hallway outside one of the rooms and he’s helping Louis into the bulky lead blanket with a radiologist watching from the doorway when a hand sneaks out from underneath and wraps around his wrist.
“Hey,” Louis says, and he scrapes a nail over only time will tell until Liam looks up. “Are you alright?”
He makes a face and Louis’ fingers slip into his, pinch the spaces between. “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said,” he says, “and you called a boat a water car before.”
“Oh, shut it,” he laughs, and then, with this urgency Liam doesn’t hear often— “It was eight minutes from turbulence to freefall. And you really need to know that you were the first person I called. You were the first person all of us called.”
Liam smiles at that but only because it’s what Louis is waiting for, and it doesn’t work at all because the look he gets in return is so, so different to the one he’s seen before (backstage, across the table at the Brits, from the other side of a crowd), and he just aches for something familiar, something he doesn’t need to swallow down.
+
The world is still turning, turning, turning three days later, and it doesn’t stop until Zayn’s hand (the free one) wraps around his wrist.
“Li,” he says, and there’s no oxygen mask and most of the tubes are out and he’s so, so, alive, with pink cheeks and wide eyes. And Liam – he can barely take it. “Please don’t—”
Liam stops the careful infinities he’s been tracing into the veins of his forearm, but Zayn makes this half-desperate noise and presses into the touch.
“Don’t leave,” he finishes, “you’re always leaving and I know what you’re thinking and I also know you’re wrong. I want you here and we want you here and I never really understood the whole just Liam and Louis and Harry and Niall thing until I realised that I need you, and I just need you to stay, can you please stay with me—”
It’s not what he wanted – the back row of a busy theatre after the end scene and before the coda, ten minutes of tongue and teeth and Zayn, is what he imagined– yet he can’t help it as he leans over the rails, presses his thumb in the hollow under Zayn’s chin and his lips to the very corner of a word.
Zayn makes a helpless sort of noise and kisses back, slips his tongue into Liam’s mouth like he’s something skittish or maybe just something to be protected, and his fingers scratch up his arm until he’s clutching Liam’s shirt, instead. The television is crackling with white noise but all he can hear is the hitch in Zayn’s breath when teeth graze his lip, the laugh when he finds the sensitive skin under Liam’s jaw.
+
(Harry can’t yelp with his ribs but he pulls a face when he walks in on them, like he hasn’t spent the past week whispering quotes from When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle whenever they’re in the same room)
+
Their new assistant – Grey, with a buzzcut and affinity for pressed suits even when Liam’s barely left the hospital for the past fortnight – forwards him their schedule and walks in with a coffee at three in the morning, which is the first sign that the day’s going to be awful.
Zayn stirs when he reaches for the coffee and they haven’t kissed since that afternoon but his lips are still swollen, fingers caught in Liam’s shirt.
“Go back to sleep,” he whispers, which is the absolute worst decision he’s made because then both Harry and Zayn are blinking awake and scowling ‘you go to sleep’ like they’ve rehearsed it, which they probably have.
Grey steals the chair in the corner and unbuttons his blazer as he sits down, and Liam lazily watches the movement, thinks of Zayn teaching him how to do it three years ago. “It’s a triple shot because you’re about to hate me,” he says, all in one breath, “you’re doing a solo with a breakfast show from New York.”
Zayn pinches his sternum through the cotton and Liam’s not quite sure why that slows his heart. “I could come with you.”
“You’re seeing that one doctor at eight,” Liam corrects, even when he wants to say yes, please, don’t let me go through this alone.
Zayn just grins at him. “The one with the eyebrows?”
“Cheekbones.”
Both Harry and Grey are watching them with this certain fascination and Liam barely notices, too caught up in the clarity of Zayn’s fingertips on his stomach.
“The press is getting restless,” Grey explains and looking away is the hardest thing Liam’s done in fourteen days, six hours. “Reporters snuck in last night through the morgue and hid out in the stairwell for thirteen hours eavesdropping. If you give them twenty minutes willingly—”
It’s silent, for a moment, when Grey cuts himself off and then Harry’s wheezing as he props himself against the pillows. “We could all go,” he breathes, all raspy, and Liam thinks everyone is so, so wrong about this boy with perpetual bed hair and owlish eyes and a big smile. “The cast was put on Louis’ foot last night and Niall’s bragging about his stamina again. We’re ready.”
Except they’re not. He knows it in the curve of Niall’s spine and the hitch in Zayn’s breath, the bottle of pills Louis keeps close and the platitude of pillows on Harry’s bed. So he takes a sip of the scalding coffee and practises his responses with Zayn scratching out an SOS on his palm.
+
(His suitcase is three blocks away and everything Grey brought over belongs to someone else so he ends up wearing Louis’ bleached white henley with the sleeves rolled up, Harry’s skin tight jeans and Niall’s snapback and Zayn’s boots and it’s not the same as shouting along to Madonna in the car, but it’s close enough)
+
The sky is that hazy place between black and blue when they sneak out through the fire exit, with the neon lights reflected on the icy dark road. There are a few girls tentatively watching from across the street and he feels bare, when they say his name but not Harry’s, sweet and soft and cautious. They’ve been so absent for two weeks so he goes over with something like a grin and says ‘thank you they’re getting better we’re so sorry’ until Grey tugs him into the taxi.
They’re thirty seconds from live when Grey grabs his collar and tugs him out of range of the camera. “You’re going to be brilliant,” he says, and Liam wonders if there’s been a PSA on how to react around him after he dry heaved by a park bench a fortnight ago.
He pinches at the fingers tangled in his shirt. “Go find me a chocolate scone,” he teases, instead of a thank-you, and Grey smirks like he gets it as Liam walks on stage.
The interview is live and she lets him keep his phone on the coffee table as long as he reads out every third text from the boys, things like fix your sleeves asshole and tell them about Nurse Andrews and the jelly cups that make the crowd laugh instead of watching him like he’s an exhibit from a different era.
(others – messages like wow you look like circa eighties Springsteen and you’d look better with that dumb shirt off – are kept to himself)
Fifteen minutes pass too quick and there are just a few audience questions between him and the taxi ride home. A girl in a live while we’re young shirt is first, and she offers this sympathetic smile he can’t look at before asking, “how would you describe the other boys?”
He bites his lip and considers it, for a moment, and from the corner of his eye he sees Louis text him ????? and Zayn’s it’ll bruise if you keep that up. “They’re the best people I know,” he says, even if it’s inadequate. “The bravest, and definitely the strongest. I wouldn’t be here – definitely not in Chicago, but probably not the person I am – without them.”
The audience coos and he flushes this hideous pink, but the four x’s he receives within a minute trick a grin out of him the whole drive back to the hospital.
+
Zayn’s bandage is off when he gets to the room. The scar curls from the crook of his neck and branches off as roots, over the corner of his chest, down the inside of his arm to stop abruptly at his wrist, and angry pink lines cut his tattoos in half, disfiguring the clean borders of the bandana, mic thinner by an inch, the black and yellow comic tribute now a zp, and all Liam can think of is Zayn’s first name with his last.
“Damage to your right arm was quite extensive,” the doctor says, and Liam has his fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of Zayn’s neck as Harry, Niall and Louis hold his hand, ankle, wrist. He looks encouraging as he touches the scar, though, and Zayn presses back into them. “Debris caused pretty extensive cuts and there were concerns about the brachial plexus—”
(their grip tightens, just minutely, and Liam thinks I will remember this feeling for the rest of my life)
Liam zones out when he says no nerve damage is evident and starts watching Zayn for those little microexpressions that give him away.
+
“Hey,” Liam whispers. It’s midnight and Zayn should be asleep but he just smiles at him, a little sad, when Liam sees the phone light shining on his scar. He swallows down something awful. “Want to come with me for a bit?”
They sneak through the hallway and into the empty study room by the stairwell and Liam knows how it looks, with a mattress covered in blankets and a half dozen lit candles and a stupidly expensive projector and Thor: The Dark World frozen against the white wall. Liam lets the blush burn his cheeks and refuses to look away.
“How do you have the movie?” Zayn asks and if he’d been anyone else in the entire world he would sound awed or reverent but this – this slight amusement and resigned kind of curiosity, like he sounds when he says of course you could do it, you’re Liam goddamn Payne – is so, so much better.
There are two popcorn boxes from the cinema on the corner and Liam pulls out a handful and Zayn eats from his greasy fingers. “Just called in a favour,” he says, because I called around and insinuated I was friends with Tom Hiddleston and agreed to name drop their theatre sounds a little too desperate.
Zayn looks at him like he can see his bones. “Extraordinary,” he says, and Liam doesn’t ask if he means him or the movie.
They settle onto the two mattresses wedged together and Liam’s half in the gap between with Zayn lying on his chest so he can mouth at his hairline between scenes to stop from mauling him, instead.
+
Liam can’t get on the plane.
They’ve been at the hospital for a week too long and Louis has that look in his eyes he gets when he misses home and the thought of boarding a plane makes Liam sick, sick to his bones, but he can cope with an hour or seven of that ache under his skin for them.
Except he can’t, even with Louis in front and Niall behind and Zayn and Harry bracketing him like he’s something to be protected. His heart is burning a hole right through his chest and the 787 is huge but the moment he steps on board, the world shrinks to—
I hope your damned plane crashes
He takes a step back, right into Niall and right off the plane. “Go ahead,” he says and it’s like they knew this was going to happen, the way they turn to him expectantly. “I’ve just— I’ll meet you there, yeah?”
Louis (fuck, wide eyes, soft voice, bloody hands, bloody hands) reaches out and Liam jolts backwards. “On the plane, or back home?”
“Just go,” he repeats, staring resolutely at the wings of the plane, if just to confirm they’re stable, and he knows he’s crying and nudging Harry’s bad side but he just needs them gone, “You need to get home and I’ll—”
“What?” Niall says, and his lips look blue in the sterile light and Liam can’t look at him. “You’ll drive to Alaska and take a boat to Russia and spend three weeks on the Trans-Siberian? Liam—”
“I’ll figure something out with Grey — fucking stop looking at me like that—”
Because he doesn’t deserve sympathy or pity or anything except for a get the fuck over yourself, and the boarding tunnel is made of glass so he can see the clear sky, Harry’s hideous orange suitcase on a luggage carrier, planes landing, and he can’t watch but he can’t look at the four of them, either—
“Okay,” Zayn says, and Liam wishes he could say that his scars looks ugly but in reality it just draws attention to his broad shoulders, delicate wrists, and Liam feels like a monster for thinking so.
His breath hitches. “You’ll leave?”
Harry slings an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll all stay.”
+
Space, he thinks, just a few inches on either side or a whole body width in front and maybe an entire city between their hands, would be enough to calm him down, but they won’t give him that. Instead they wedge together in the back seat of a car (Louis over his thighs, Niall and Harry holding hands at the nape of his neck, Zayn half in his lap) and take turns calling the estate agents from a list Grey already has on him.
It’s dusk by the time they pull out the front of The House North of Chicago, capitalised by Harry a half hour ago as he doodled little hearts around ‘four bedrooms and ‘bathroom fireplace’ and ‘high ceilings’. Only him and Niall are awake (alive, alive, alive) enough for the showing so the others sit in the car, make cooing noises over the French rosewood deck on the phone.
The agent walks backwards through the empty rooms and says all the bullshit Liam heard the last time he bought a loft. Grainy phone quality distorts Zayn’s voice but Liam could recognise the smile behind ‘it has a porch, Li’ if he was a whole world away.
They’re in the kitchen with its marble countertops and post-industrialist splashback when Harry steals the other phone from the backseat. “Liam,” he says, in that lower register he seems to think is a whisper, “this place has a vertical garden and a maple tree. It’s like autumn and spring at the same time.”
Liam looks out the nearest window and sees the neighbour’s fence and he can’t remember the last time he had a neighbour or a fence or even a hiding place for a spare key and—
“I think we’ve seen enough,” he says, and it’s theirs before the pizza arrives.
+
The study is the only room in the house with spare wood, so they light a fire and eat on the cold floor while Harry looks around the room like he’s falling in love. They’ve ordered four pizzas but only finish three (which they always do, always the same four, as well, as if there’s a general consensus of international pizzerias to always serve margarita, pepperoni, vegetarian and Hawaiian for the sake of homesick boybands).
(none of them actually like pineapple on pizza but it’s always the one they crave hungover, and they’ll pick out the chunks in hotel rooms at five a.m in yesterday’s clothes as they pass around Gatorade flavours)
They talk about fuck all over a six-pack of beer that Liam can’t quite swallow and they’re in the middle of a conversation about Pixar they’ve had a thousand times over—
(“Up was revolutionary,” Louis says, with a passion he usually reserves for his ear piece and shoe collection. “The aspect of maturity in the opening sequence is unparalleled—”
Zayn scoffs and presses the sole of his foot to the inside of Liam’s thigh. “The exploration of abandonment and nostalgia in Toy Story is the foundation of every animated film in the past decade,” he counters, and Liam will never be able to consider the role of an antagonist as a hero without flushing at the memory of the look in his eyes)
— when Grey pulls him away to show him the mattresses they ordered.
It’s pitch black and wintry outside and Grey’s looking at him like he’s about to fall apart.
A cardboard cup is shoved into his hand and Grey looks vindictive as he scowls at the Starbucks logo. “Not coffee,” he says, when Liam takes a sip and wrinkles his nose at the taste. And then, while he’s swallowing and helpless, he adds, “when was the last time you slept for more than an hour?”
He scowls and shoves at the memory foam just to see it rebound. “Recently,” he mumbles, a little defensive, when really it was a week ago with Zayn’s head in his lap after the interview. “I’m handling it.”
One of the moving trucks drives past in time for him to see the roll of Grey’s eyes as he smoothes out Liam’s collar. “There are only four mattresses.”
(maybe it’s wishful thinking but when he thinks of sleeping, he thinks of crisp, creased sheets and a quilt that smells like home and Zayn, right there next to him)
“Li,” Zayn says from the doorway, with his hip propped against the frame and a hand in his hair, and Liam thinks he’s smiling but the light casts all kinds of shadows over his features, the shadows cast by his eyelashes, the natural curl of his lips, the worst of the scarring. “We’re picking rooms, are you—?”
He nods and stumbles up the lawn, maybe a little too enthusiastically, and Grey cuts off a laugh before Liam can whack him. “Have fun with your mattress,” he yells, and Liam spins around to flick him two fingers at the way he cackles.
Zayn’s thumb catches in his belt loop on the way past. “Hey,” he says, blushing, and when he presses his cheek into Liam’s shoulder, Liam nudges back. “Are you – is there something for me to be worried about?”
He freezes and Zayn’s staring at the birthmark on his neck when he says, “No – never—”
In the light, Zayn’s eyes flicker to his lips and turning away from an almost is the easiest thing Liam’s done in weeks.
+
Zayn chooses the bedroom which will come alive with the morning sun, the one with a stripped bare feature wall and a big, empty bookcase and it’s so, so Zayn that it makes Liam ache with solidarity for the world around them, at how they will never quite break down these walls to get to him.
He turns to leave but Zayn twines their fingers together with his injured hand and tugs him backwards. “Can you stay?” he asks, and Liam would give anything to remove the doubt from his voice.
Helpless, he thinks, helpless and nowhere close to being able to deny him. Liam keeps his eyes on him as they tug off their jeans, stretching out on the bed until Zayn curls under his arm.
His hand drifts all the way down Zayn’s back and he doesn’t like the feeling of cotton under his fingers, especially when he could be touching the knobs of his spine instead. “Hey,” he says, grasping the button-up under the covers. “Isn’t this my shirt from the last tour?”
Zayn bites at his collarbone. “Shut it,” he scowls, even as he cuddles closer so Liam can tuck the blankets around his shoulders. And then, quieter, into the hollow of his throat, “I’m really glad you’re here.”
+
(he’s awake until dawn but, eventually, he falls asleep to the euphony of Zayn’s exhales against the shell of his ear)
+
There’s a jeep in the driveway and a pile of McMuffins in the kitchen and Niall propped up against the counter when he wanders into the kitchen after watching Zayn read The Outsiders out the corner of his eye for the better half of the day.
“Morning,” he says, stealing one, and it’s still hot even though 10:30 was hours ago because no one’s ever been exceptionally good at refusing Niall. He props himself up beside him and tears off the parts of the bun covered in melted cheese and passes it over.
Niall grins and throws over a key for the car. “Mate,” he groans with a mouthful of food, because in the beginning it was thank you and then it was cheers mate and sometime between moving into the same complex and finishing the first album it halved in syllables. “The car was here in the morning. Harry looks shifty whenever I ask about it and keeps telling us to go buy furniture.”
He wrinkles his nose at salty bacon. “Like that night in Japan when he drank too much happoshu?”
“Serious though,” he says, even though he’s laughing, and passes over a shopping list, “he wants a dining room table for his roast tonight.”
There was a month or so last year when Harry would start every question with an if you were in an alternate universe and the hints of them already staining the room (an upside down snapback used for their keys, cardboard slushie cups reused for orange juice, the scuff on the floorboards from either Harry’s boots or Louis’ crutches) kind of feel like that. “Wait, what?” he hisses, but Niall’s already grabbing his phone from beside the sink and slipping out the front door.
+
“Did we pick out a lounge feature yet?” Liam asks absently, with the list wrecked in his fist, and they’re on the fourth floor of a glass building with one of those wedding-register scanners that Niall’s taken to shooting lasers with at the ceiling.
Niall’s crumpled up on the box trolley they’d stolen from the check-out with a film camera delivered by the PR team. He keeps tipping it upside down to film Liam’s reaction to his jokes and they’re failing at keeping composure in the silent store. “Didn’t we decide on the Adrian collection?” he actually roars, more to the camera than to him, and Liam thwacks him over the head with the catalogue. “Which swore to, quote, ‘satisfy our needs’?”
He scowls at the back of Niall’s head and twists over to muss up his hair. “Stop being a twat,” he says, and shoves the trolley hard up the aisle when Niall bellows with laughter.
+
There are five embroidered aprons hanging from shiny gold hooks in the kitchen and a raw chicken by the sink and fresh pumpkin on the counter and Harry in the middle of it, with six open cookbooks on the breakfast table and a streak of batter across his cheek even though there’s nothing in the oven.
When Liam enters the room, Harry looks up with bright eyes and floppy curls and a furious you on his lips.
“Me?” he repeats, staring at the sous-chef Liam apron with frilly yellow edging. “I didn’t magically learn the fine art of stitching in twelve hours.”
Harry finishes dragging his wooden spoon over the oven time and flicks up to point it at him. “I was bonding with our new neighbours and buying wine glasses and fine china while you failed to find us a fridge. It’s like you want tonight’s dinner to be a failure.”
He thinks about rebutting but Harry’s standing the tallest he has in a fortnight, a month, a year, like all the stress and distress has leaked out of his vertebrae. Instead, he grabs the camera from where it’s recording on the table, scoops his keys back out of the snapback (and there’s a shallow jar beside it, now, the kind of pointless shit Louis would choose in favour of practicality) and drags his feet childishly up the hallway.
Zayn’s watching him from the top of the staircase with this amused look on his face and Liam hasn’t seen him in five hours. It says something about their band dynamic that he’s missed him to death and is thinking in terms of Romeo and Juliet and baby just say yes at the sight of him over the balcony.
“How was your book?” he says awkwardly, like he does every time Zayn reads a novel with poetic words and striking imagery, because he never understands the literary jargon that follows but he will always, always, always love the way Zayn sounds while he explains it.
He reacts so beautifully, with a soft smile and fingers tugging his sleeves down to his knuckles as he talks about the role of literature in the proletariat and the symbolism of switchblades until Liam can’t even think of leaving—
“How much do you know about refrigerators?”
+
The manager rolls her eyes when she sees them (and maybe it has something to do with the display of photo frames that Niall crashed into right before they left) and Zayn steals his hand and doesn’t let go as they walk through the room displays.
Zayn props the camera inside one of the open freezers and spreads his free hand flat against the closest fridge. “What about this one?”
Liam laughs at the description summary and leans close to bury it into the nape of Zayn’s neck and thinks he could stay like this forever. “When will we ever need a wifi circuit through our ice tray?”
“Instagram?” he suggests, tongue darting out to lick his lips until Liam stares. “And speaking of alternate forms of communication which are most definitely not necessary for functioning in the twenty-first century, have you checked your voicemail yet?”
The tattooed feather is just as fascinating as it was from the other side of the parlour chair as he watched a stranger knit it together and Liam wants to trace it with his tongue. “From forever ago?” he asks. Zayn freezes and Liam watches something tight coil around his spine. “Didn’t you tell me not to?”
Apparently satisfied, Zayn drags his fingers to the next model and doesn’t move away. “This one?” he repeats, instead of answering, and Liam’s so dizzy on him that he doesn’t notice the assistant until she’s hovering by their shoulders.
(they won’t be able to look at the fridge for weeks yet without grinning)
+
They’re wrangled into aprons the moment they cross the kitchen archway and shoved towards the sink to peel potatoes in a space too small between the bread dough and gravy sauce. It takes an hour to prep and three to cook and it’s the dumb kind of fun Liam associates with roadtrips and snow fights.
Harry shoves them out of the kitchen to go change into nice clothes, you bastards, you are not eating my roast in a onesie and when Liam walks back into the dining room after spending ten minutes pretending not to see Zayn watching him dress (and pretending not to watch Zayn), there’s a neat line of roast dinner down the centre of the table that makes him instantly nostalgic for home.
“Perfect, sweetheart,” Louis says, even though it’s not because they burnt the chicken skin and undercooked the pumpkin, because he has never been anything except avidly indulgent of Harry Styles.
Zayn nudges his foot under the table and Liam nudges back and thinks, I will keep that a secret for years.
+
Louis makes them chocolate sundaes for dessert and they sit three-two on the stairs and talk about all the dumb things they said years ago and terrorise the moving crew around them.
(“I think it would look better under the mirror,” Zayn says, with his legs stretched out in front of him and head on Liam’s shoulders and fingers wriggling a hole into his sweatshirt. “It looks out of place by the stairwell.”
“We talked about this,” Niall repeats, because somewhere they found the time to talk about every furniture decision without Liam’s notice, “the symmetry of the archways produces the kind of breath that the traditional Chinese could only dream of. Fung shui, Zayn.”
Liam presses a grin into the banister. “Qi, Zayn.”
“Wind-water, Zayn,” Harry echoes, and Louis smacks an obnoxious kiss to his forehead for the proud look on his face.
“To the left!” Zayn yells anyway, flashing them a grin, just for the way Niall mumbles everything you own in a box to the left like it’s an automatic response, and the moving crew would probably hate them if Louis hadn’t made extras.)
And it feels – normal, almost, so normal that he has to blink hard at the cast on Louis’ foot or the unsteady line of Zayn’s shoulders, and he’s not going to let it ruin this, he’s not, so he slips out and into an empty room and leans against the locked door until his breathing slows.
“Li?” Zayn whispers, from the other side of the wall, and Liam remembers a hotel in a city he can’t remember and a glass bath and opens the door.
“’M fine,” he says, and he loves the absence of pity in Zayn’s eyes but hates the certain hint of understanding. “Really, Zayn, I’m—”
“Oh fuck off,” Zayn scolds, and sits down against the door and holds his hand until they’re talking about the newest Superman movie, instead.
+
Liam’s spent half of the month they’ve been in Chicago listening to doctors and jargon and advice from every facet of the media slowly leaking back into their lives, and he’s mostly certain that one of Zayn’s scars is infected. So after herding him to the clinic and spending twenty minutes in the pharmacy picking out an antiseptic cream, he wraps a hand around the nape of Zayn’s neck and guides him into the master en suite Louis hates using.
The centrepiece of the room is this rounded porcelain bath with a rainfall showerhead. It’s nothing like the one three flights ago, where it felt like the only heat in the world was produced from the friction between them. There’s all this empty space but when Zayn settles by the tap, Liam slots a knee between his and presses close and down, and there’s a part of him that claims practicality when, really, it’s mostly because Zayn is beautiful from this and every angle.
Zayn’s laugh turns breathy when Liam pulls away. “Tease,” he scolds as he curves his spine to pull off his shirt without jostling Liam, and hypocrisy has never looked as beautiful as it does on Zayn Malik.
He’s quiet as Liam washes his scars in these methodical strokes of the washcloth that leave goosebumps in their wake, with his neck stretched towards the window to show all the roots , deeper and a burning pink at the edges. The gel is slick and heavy and leaves behind an artificial shine that makes Liam’s fingers stick for a moment too long.
“It’s a shame,” Zayn laughs suddenly, even though there’s no humour in his voice. His fingers still and Zayn nudges back into the touch and Liam studies the twitch of his jaw. “I was meant to get the next piece this weekend in Seattle. The contrast with the half-sleeve would have looked perfect.”
There are a thousand ways Liam could react to the situation and he decides on tracing his name into Zayn’s collarbone with sticky, trembling fingers. “The one with the lines and colours?” he mumbles, and he thinks of the distorted nothing etched into napkins, draft setlists, on the pavement outside their venues. “Wouldn’t the scarring add an aspect of industrialism to the post-modernist abstract?”
Zayn looks down at the space between them and grins, like he doesn’t want the world to see but can’t quite keep from it. “Do you even know what you just said?”
“It was off the tattooist’s facebook,” he admits, and when Zayn laughs with crinkled eyes and stretched lips, he adds, “I walked around with it written on my hand just in case you brought it up.”
The bath’s faucet is detachable and Zayn knocks it deliberately, Liam’s shirt soaking in seconds and the water trickling down his spine like a caress. They fight over the cord and by the time Zayn uses the hem of Liam’s white shirt for a surrender, there’s water all over the tiles and the shower’s pelting hot water onto their faces and there’s nowhere else in the world he would rather be than in their fake rainstorm, even if that means they need to stifle their laughter as they reapply the cream for a second, third, fourth time.
+
(that night, he’s curled all the way around Zayn with a hand on the dip of his spine and spare fingers tangled in his hair, because it’s his turn to be brave, when he hears—
“I was in your chair,” Zayn whispers, and he’s mastered the art of breathing out words, “the glare from the wing lights kept hitting my eyes and I missed you and I know you won’t see it this way, but that was the only thing anchoring me while we were falling out of the sky.”)
+
(and it’s a shame, really, that four hours later Liam’s still stuck on your chair.)
+
Two years ago, backstage before their very first television appearance as a Real Band with a Real Album and Real Career to match, Harry overworked his throat and forgot how to breathe and fainted into Louis’ lap. It’s been this dumb inside joke in the band since then, even if they hold hands before every show to calm him down.
Harry’s perched on one of the bar stools by the breakfast table with a book balancing precariously on his glass of apple juice. As Liam stumbles sleepily around the kitchen cooking a fry up because Zayn’s out buying groceries and he always wants scrambled eggs when he gets home, he catches a glimpse of the title – Paced breathing: A comprehensive analysis on the diaphragm under pressure – and slides a plate of too hot toast across the table instead of commenting.
Their elbows knock as they eat and Liam’s soothed by the sound of Harry chewing each mouthful six times before swallowing. It’s taken them a few years to classify the quiet between them as an ease instead of discomfort and now they have this down to an art, so it’s only a matter of time before—
“Liam,” he sighs, all put upon and pouty. “There’s nothing in the world to fix me.”
He grins and shoves away their plates and the heavy textbooks from fuck knows where out of the way. “It’s not something that can be studied,” he explains, and Harry rolls his eyes because he’s heard it all before but Liam’s going to get it through his thick skull, thick head, thick hair, if it’s the last thing he does. “With practise, your breath capacity will be back in a few weeks.”
Harry snorts. “At least now I know what you were doing while I was lying on my death bed,” he teases and smiles beatifically at Liam, “is this another occasion for marathoning we didn’t start the fire?”
They’ve been singing dumb warm-ups and trading quick verses for the past half-hour with increasing intensity when Liam loses a note.
“Out of breath?” Harry mocks, even though he’s doubled over heaving and refuses to stop. “Zayn clearly hasn’t been riding you hard enough.”
“Excuse you,” he says with his voice cracking for the first time in years at the thought of strong thighs straddling his hips and fingers curled into fists against his sternum.
Harry looks at him like he’s the one speaking in code. “His right hand was fucked up for weeks,” he says slowly and then, like he gets it, “Wow, imagine all the thank-god-we’re-alive sex you’ve missed.”
He knows he’s blushing from the way Harry’s giggling but he’s too flustered to care. “Oh shut it,” he scolds, and Harry only stops when he adds— “I will tell Jake Gyllenhaal he’s your celebrity crush on Jay Leno I swear to god.”
(by the time Zayn walks into the room with three plastic bags in each hand, Harry’s a little more familiar with the top of his lungs and only ruins the second chorus when he sees Liam watching the play of muscles under Zayn’s jumper, and Harry’s smug and hums uptown girl under his breath all day.)
+
Their room is only half-furnished and the feature wall is still just a base coat and the way the sunlight dances across the room and sets fire to Zayn’s eyes is the most beautiful thing in the world. They start sleeping tangled together, like they’re taking turns shielding each other from the world, and Liam still cries a little too often and sleeps a little short of enough, but sometimes Zayn wakes up like he’s taking his very first breath out of the wreckage and Liam can deal with pins and needles and a mouthful of hair and a little emasculation if it means they’re not alone in it.
He wakes up just before dawn to an inky blue sky and Zayn doing push ups on the floor. There’s a thin line of sweat down the nape of his neck that stains his t-shirt dark and soft hair keeps falling in his eyes and Liam loves Zayn’s back, loves the curves and contours of his spine and how every inch of him is so damn harmonic.
Zayn falters when he sees Liam watching but recovers enough to flash him a grin. “Good morning,” he whispers as he climbs back into bed. “I think it’s getting stronger.”
Liam laughs a little too loud and it’s right now, with the sun in his eyes and something warm in the air when he couldn’t bear to die because that would mean leaving this. “Reckon you could take me?”
Zayn raises his eyebrows when Liam doesn’t bother to correct himself, just clasps their opposing hands together with his pinkie caught in Zayn’s sweatshirt. They hold tight and Liam is so entranced in the tension in his spine that he slacks all over and Zayn follows his momentum, halfway onto his chest with this smirk that he usually reserves for words Liam doesn’t know and winning arguments against Louis. His lips are chapped from the run yesterday and Liam thinks of that kiss in Casablanca Harry has made him watch a thousand times and thinks, yeah, this could be something magical, right now could be what he remembers for the rest of his life—
But then his fingers catch on the smooth lines scorched into Zayn’s wrist and they both flinch away and Zayn is the only one who leans back in.
He exhales too harshly and shifts to the edge of the bed, presses fists into his eyes, and Liam does the same until technicolour blurs his vision. “You don’t have to look at me,” Zayn mumbles. He sounds so lost and Liam doesn’t know what to say. And when he gets tired of the space between them or waiting for Liam to fucking get it together, Zayn bites out— “Well I don’t want to look at you either.”
+
Guilty, he thinks, with his lips buried into Zayn’s cold pillow, when it’s four a.m and Zayn’s still in Harry’s room, that’s the way he feels, because thoughts of being waist-deep in muddy water and I ruined our date and I hope your damned plane crashes all leave something awful stained to his tongue, and he will never be able to get it off, and the sleeves Zayn swims – drowns – in are all his fault—
+
It’s rainy and miserable and so, so fitting outside when Louis nudges open the door with his hip and climbs all the way under the blankets with him. In the soft blue light, he looks lost, like he did on the stretcher.
“I’m not sure what happened,” Louis whispers as he presses his shoulder against Liam’s and it’s so hot it burns through his skin, not that either of them will admit to the pain. “But we’re going to fix it. You are not a product of Mills and Boon.”
He frowns into Louis’ hair and wriggles a hand down to press a thumb into the muscle belly of his calf. “I thought those were romantic?”
Louis nudges into his touch until Liam starts rubbing in slow circles. “They are, until you find out he’s a cult leader or a vampire or a murderer and you’re not one night in an abandoned village away from losing your only chance at true happiness so put a fucking shirt on and let me orchestrate my magic.”
“You are not Sebastian from the Little Mermaid,” he groans, even as he follows Louis all the way to the paint store.
They’ve been studying a wall of paint swatches for twenty minutes, deciding between stolen emerald and green gentleman and the legal team is working on a settlement, today, so the press is hovering by the bleach.
Liam catches a glance of the swatches Louis is hoarding and flips his sample of smoke morning at his face. “Zayn hates purple,” he says, snatching away the toxic valentine and replacing it with pavlove, a pale shade of sanguine that he can’t help but think will look beautiful against Zayn’s bare skin.
Louis flicks a look at the press and then, louder, says, “pas de cheval or exile blue?”
And soon enough it’s not his choice at all, with strangers arguing over the representation of contrast and harmony between shades and intensities while Liam adds little things like—
“I am not waking up to martyrdom mirage tomorrow.”
— and very, very deliberately doesn’t think of how he presumed the room would still be theirs in the morning.
+
When they get home (and it’s a home and it is most definitely theirs), Louis pleads a swollen foot and makes Liam carry the cans of paint upstairs. He’s halfway into the room before he realises the sound of quick footsteps down the hallway and Zayn watching him with a certain fascination and the door slamming behind them.
“Again?” Zayn groans as the deadlock – installed, this time – clicks behind them. They’re pressed together from shoulder to hip and Liam loves the solidarity, and loves a little more, too. “I thought you weren’t one for repeat schemes, Lou—”
Niall laughs out a shut the fuck up from the other side of the door while Liam looks at the remains of their bedroom. The bed is pressed against the wrong corner and there’s newspaper all over the floor and he didn’t realise how much stuff they’d accumulated (dumbbells, albums they fall asleep to and these old novels Liam tries to read to impress Zayn but can’t get past the first few pages) until it formed a mountain on their bed.
“No more almost or pining,” Louis yells, and he sounds like he does when he’s terrorising the staff backstage, chasing Zayn’s nieces through the backyard, sneaking out through the fire exit. “Zayn, Liam knows the most pointless shit about you. He thinks you hung the moon and have the voice of an angel and probably daydreams about posting an engagement announcement in The Times. I have no clue why you think he’s not mad for you.”
“Liam,” Harry says, softer, and he’s so sick of the way Zayn tenses against him. “Zayn stood outside your bedroom for two hours last night to make sure you were okay. And I watched you sit in that hospital room for a fortnight doing the same. Now sort your shit out.”
Silence echoes but that never lasts too long, here. Niall clears his throat. “Dramatic,” he teases. “We’re going to be perfecting flatbread. Fix yourselves.”
Liam waits until the others leave and twists to bury his face in Zayn’s neck before he can pull away. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. Zayn’s wearing this threadbare white crewneck designed to drive him insane, what – with the way the edges of his collarbone are showing and the hints of the tattoo by his hip under the fabric.
“Do you even know what you’re apologising for?” he asks as he knocks their ankles together. He’s barefoot in Liam’s jeans and Liam can’t look away.
“Almost,” he promises and Zayn just stares at him.
They take turns choosing colour combinations and it’s easy, falling into that pattern where they spend too much time watching each other and Liam finds any excuse to touch him (put your hips into it, Zayn) and he’s having the time of his life deliberately not thinking about anything other than right now.
He’s taken to dipping his fingertips in too much paint and flicking it at the wall when Jack Mannequin’s you can breathe follows all you need is love. “I’m noticing a reoccurring theme here.”
Zayn looks at him indulgently and there’s a line of burnt orange along his cheekbone that Liam loses breath over. “Feeling empowered?” he teases, refocussed on the wall. “Sceptered? Sanguine—?”
“That’s a colour,” Liam groans, and the look Zayn gives him could set the world on fire. “And no more big words, it’s not fair.”
They swap colours and while they’re busy mixing paint and testing colour combinations on the newspaper floor, Zayn smirks at him. “How about auspicious?”
The way Zayn’s lips form around the syllables is nothing short of obscene and Liam can’t take it, just dips his whole hand in the paint and shoves Zayn back with a bright green hand on his chest.
Zayn glares at him and coats his hands in paint, knuckles in pink and fingers in red and palm in blue and wrist in green. Fingers tangle in his shirt and pull him close and they wrestle for the most damage, a handprint dragged right across Zayn’s neck, a scoop of paint down the front of Liam’s shirt that stains a line of yellow to his chest.
It’s innocent until it’s not, until it’s very deliberately not about winning, and they’re knocking over paint cans and sparring on the floor and it looks like a rainbow rushed through their bedroom when they stop for breath. There’s a forearm over Liam’s chest and a fistful of bright blue hair in his fist and a knee pressed to the hollow of his stomach but he’s never felt so much like floating.
Liam wants to kiss him. And right now, with the sun in his eyes and a bright pink streak on Zayn’s forehead like a crescent moon, he thinks he can. He tugs Zayn close with the hand in his hair and thinks he might die, like his heart will stop beating, when Zayn stands up instead.
“Just let me grab another shirt,” Zayn says. He’s not looking at Liam and one of his sleeves was ripped in the scuffle and he’s using both hands to hold it together, so Liam grabs Zayn’s wrist to hoist himself up and his grip stains the skin there bright blue. “I really don’t want to see your face when you see them so—”
“What?” he asks – begs, really – and tries to sneak into Zayn’s field of vision without prying his eyes open and pushing too close.
“It’s okay,” he says, but it’s really, really not if okay is nervous lips and wet eyes. “I know I’m not – the way I was. You don’t need to pretend to be alright with it and you don’t need to see them.”
And then, quieter, he adds, “You don’t even need to look at me.”
Liam stares, for a moment, and wriggles blue fingers deliberately under Zayn’s tattered shirt to touch one of the scars. “You are the most beautiful thing in the world,” he swears, a little fervent, and tightens his grip until Zayn’s next breath comes out shaky. “You have been since you wore that ugly red jumper three weeks after we met for the first time, and there’s nothing in the whole world that’s going to change that. Not the words you say or the things you do or the way you look, and definitely not this. Here comes the sun makes sense when I see you and you are my American wedding and that night in Orlando – when we were so sick of our own voices we took to covers, instead – I thought you weren’t something I was able to describe, yet. So I settled on teenage dream because I can’t stop thinking about running away with you.”
Zayn curls forward like he’s collapsing, presses his forehead to Liam’s collarbone. “You’ve barely looked at me,” he whispers.
Liam can’t say anything to that so he carefully slides his kaleidoscope red fingers into his hair. “Well now I’m not going to take my eyes off you.”
There’s something fragile in Zayn’s eyes when they meet his and it’s followed with a kiss that feels more like a hello than anything else. Something slow and dirty is playing in the background and Liam will never remember what the song is because he’s too caught up in the way Zayn groans when Liam flickers his tongue over his lower lip and how he tastes like sugar and the twist of muscles in his forearms while he tries to think of where to touch first.
He’s too dizzy to do much better than an arm around his waist and a hand under one of his thighs and Zayn cheers softly into his mouth when they smash into the door. Zayn tugs off their shirts with a clumsy motion and drags his hands shakily down Liam’s chest to fumble at their jeans and the ache in Liam’s jammed fingers is so, so worth it.
“I’ve thought about this for the longest time,” Liam confesses, because it’s a Tuesday and his turn to be brave and he owes Zayn this. “Whether just grinding would be enough to get you off and the way it would feel, being kept on the edge like that; it’s going to be unbearable—”
Zayn whines and bites Liam’s lip until it aches for his tongue. They shove their jeans hastily down to their thighs and that innate sense of rhythm etched into Zayn’s bones has never been as beautiful as it is when used to thrust their hips together. It’s too dry and a little fast and the absolute best feeling in the world, and Liam wants to look down, wants to see their cocks together and the catch of their hip bones on every thrust but there’s not enough force in the universe to pull him away from Zayn’s lips.
They get desperate fast and the edge isn’t as fantastic as he imagined so he cheats, sneaks a hand between them to trace around the head of Zayn’s cock until his hips stutter and that’s all it takes for him to be gone, gone, gone for Zayn.
“Hey beautiful,” he whispers into his neck when they stop panting, which is a little longer than either of them will admit.
“Unnecessary,” Zayn groans, with a blush staining his cheeks and a body-shaped rainbow staining the white door behind them and this dumb giddy smile on his lips that Liam could fall in love with.
They order a tasting platter from the Chinese place down the road and bribe the delivery guy until he agrees to climb the tree to their window. It’s stuffing wrapped in pastry and fried pork and honey chicken so they forgo the chopsticks and take turns feeding each other off their hands. Zayn loves the honey sauce so Liam dips his ring finger in and slides it between sticky lips, and Zayn keeps it against the roof of his mouth with his tongue.
Liam’s fingers subconsciously trace the line right down the centre of his wrist and Zayn relaxes at the touch for the first time, tips his head back so all of him is bare.
He leans close to kiss the underside of Zayn’s jaw and holds there. “You could on me,” he whispers, because there’s a part of him that wants to keep this secret. “The tattoo for your sleeve. I want it on me.”
The next breath from Zayn’s lips gets caught in his throat and he doesn’t say no or don’t, just tilts his head forward until his lips find Liam’s.
+
It takes an hour or three but eventually they stumble downstairs, even if Liam’s shoved against the banister so Zayn can suck a mark onto his neck.
They’re grinding lazily and he’s desperate for the hollow of Zayn’s hip when Harry makes a wounded noise behind them.
“I did not think the repercussions of your happiness through,” he groans, even as he grins at them. “Please don’t defile every surface of the house.”
Liam loses himself in the hollows of Zayn’s body – the base of his throat, the space between his arms – and blinks up at them both. “Not every surface,” he teases, lips catching deliberately on Zayn’s bare chest. “The oven’s safe from us. And I’m sure fucking on the stairs isn’t very comfortable.”
Harry looks at their position and Liam doesn’t quite remember when Zayn wriggled a hand down the front of his pants, or when he propped his foot against one of the stairs to thrust back a little harder. “The fridge is fair ground,” Zayn offers as Harry stomps outside. Then, louder— “We love you too!”
They trade soft kisses for a little while longer before stealing the cranberry vodka from the cupboard and joining the others on the deck. There’s a space in the pile of blankets for the two of them and Louis looks unbearably smug at the trail of hickeys down Zayn’s neck.
“You two reek,” Niall laughs as he buries into Liam’s side and shoves half of a red velvet cake at them, “I think our downright admirable radio silence about the sounds coming from your room deserves a little dessert.”
Zayn takes to feeding Liam forkfuls and licking the cream-cheese icing off his lips while Louis mixes the vodka with cherry coke and passes around tumblers. “I’ve never ruined my best friends’ lives with my oversexed libido,” Louis says, laughing when the four of them drink and looking positively outraged when Harry shoves his glass towards him. “Fuck off, I’m so discreet I’m basically celibate.”
“It’s a very small bus,” Niall teases, stealing Zayn’s fork and licking it clean. “Remember the time you made up with Eleanor in New York?”
“Remember the time you broke up with Eleanor in Washington?” Harry giggles and kicks up the blanket. “I had that bruise on my arse for a month.”
Louis steals the cake back with a glare and jabs his foot until it hits someone’s (Niall’s) stomach. “I hope you all need Viagra before you’re thirty,” he groans. “And that was nothing in comparison to you and that girl in Vancouver.”
And they trade stories they’ve already heard and dares they’ve had a thousand times over until the mid-spring breeze forces them inside.
+
Their first interview back as a group is the very next day with the host from The Morning Show so Liam doesn’t get the breakfast in bed and sleepy blow job and cocoon of blankets he’s always associated with Zayn and their first night together, but he does get careful fingers feeding him slices of toast and a mutual hand job in the shower.
“Harder,” Zayn whimpers, with an arm wrapped tight around his shoulders and his spare hand wrapped around Liam’s cock and water running down his back as Zayn thrusts slow into his fist. “Is it tight enough?”
He groans and slips down to trace the scar curled around Zayn’s shoulder with his tongue, just like he thought of doing while Zayn stroked it absently reading The Odyssey for the sixth time. “Just keep talking, please don’t stop, please don’t stop—”
“I could suck you off,” Zayn whispers and he is beautiful always but especially like this, with wet hair and bedroom eyes and arched back, “Get on my knees for you and anchor your hips and use my tongue. I used to think of you when I practised with other guys, whether I’d be able to deepthroat you, what you would be like, how you would sound, if you’d be as reactive as you are on stage with your fingers tangled in my hair—”
Liam dislodges the tidy row of body wash in their shower when he comes hard enough to see stars and Zayn follows with an oh on his lips and they spend so much time washing off that they’re still damp in the car on the way over.
+
“So aside from rehab,” the host starts, twenty minutes into the interview, “what have you been doing for two months?”
They’re all holding hands and Liam’s a little nervous and the roar is deafening, louder than it’s ever been, louder than Madison Square and arriving in Australia and the Olympics combined, at least that’s the way it feels. He blushes at the question when Zayn squeezes his hand like a heartbeat, like a reminder of what’s been and what’s to come, as Niall grins at the audience to distract them.
“Personally I’ve perfected the art of a fine tiramisu,” Harry says, curling his fingers against Louis’ palm. “It was just really fantastic to do all the things we talked about.”
Zayn leans forward and one of his buttons is missing from where Liam grabbed him for a pre-crowd kiss that lasted five minutes. “And we’d just like to say a massive thank-you to everyone for being so respectful while we recovered.”
There’s a beat of silence and then Louis snorts from the other side of Niall. “You can tell that we’ve morphed into one being without contact with the outside world,” he laughs as he leans forward, because he’s mastered letting the world in on a secret.
“Liam’s definitely rubbed off on me,” Zayn says and Liam chokes on his next inhale at the implications while Harry tries his hardest to look extra charming.
Niall clears his throat awkwardly. “We’ve actually been filming for our movie.”
The screen just behind the host is playing snippets from that camera and the crowd shrieks when a recording of the five of them half-naked in the mirror shows.
On screen, Harry rubs shaving cream into his cheeks and pouts when Louis plucks the razor from his hands. “I don’t know why you bother shaving,” Louis teases as he swipes at the foam on Harry’s face and rubs it into his own neck, “you have the face of a pre-pubescent child.”
He glares at them in the mirror. “I’m a man, Louis Tomlinson, and I will not stand for that blasphemy.”
“You keep using that word,” Zayn says, from where he and Liam are washing temporary dye out of Niall’s hair since he lost a bet about mattress surfing. “I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Out of camera, Liam knocks his ankle against Zayn’s and mumbles, “as you wish.”
Niall blinks up at them with bright pink hair and the detachable showerhead in his hand. “Stop flirting,” he groans, and squirts water all over the four of them until they tackle him into the bath.
(Liam doesn’t remember the rest of the interview and when they watch it back that night, he sees the exact moment he thinks I love you as hard as he can in Zayn’s direction)
+
They’re high off adrenaline and reluctant to return home and it’s the 22nd, Haz, don’t doubt the power of tradition so they go exploring. There’s a baseball game on that afternoon and Liam knows even less about it than he does American football but Zayn’s indulgent, keeps a hand in his hair and steals his aviators in the late morning sun and whispers you’re going to set me on fire whenever he stares too long.
There’s a kiss cam and when it stops on Niall, halfway through a drag of beer, he knocks off his snapback and turns to the girl he’s been flirting with all game. He tilts his head like a do you want to? and presses his lips to her cheek when she teases him about his blush, and keeps kissing her for the rest of the game.
It’s still light out when the game finishes and they’re debating the merits of the Sears Tower and Buckingham Fountain the whole way back to the car before they realise that Niall’s five hundred people behind them.
“Tiebreaker!” Harry yells and throws himself onto Niall’s back once they’re close enough. “Would you rather watch a spontaneous performance of can you feel the love tonight at a moonlit fountain or to the blinking lights of a skyline?”
Niall’s got a hand on the small of the girl’s back and she’s pretty, gorgeous, even, so he barely notices the four of them. “I was actually going to drive Kiah home,” he says, still staring at her with that blush high on his cheeks.
“We could drop her off on the way?” Harry offers and yelps when Liam flicks him on the back of the head. Then, grumpily— “Or afterwards.”
Zayn tugs Harry off them by the scruff of his neck and throws the keys (stolen from Liam’s back pocket, fuck, when did he manage that?) to Niall. “Drive safe.”
(they end up on the top of the Sears Tower with their foreheads pressed to the glass and Zayn speaks in lines Liam doesn’t understand but loves to death while Harry and Louis sing the sweet caress of twilight— there’s magic everywhere like they’ve been waiting to for years.)
+
(“We have the backyard for a dog,” Harry says suddenly that Friday morning while they jog around the pond down the road. “I’ve always wanted a husky. We could call him Holden like that character in The Catcher in the Rye Zayn has a hard on for.”
It’s quiet, then, until Louis pleads ankle and stumbles off the track. “What about when we go on tour?” he asks, careful, careful, watching them all like he can protect them from this. “I mean, we’re going back, right?”
There’s nothing say to that so they get back on the path and run it off in silence. When they’re ten minutes from home, Zayn slows down to flick Harry’s headband against his forehead. “And fuck you, Holden Caulfield was written to transcend generations.”)
+
“Niall Horan,” Louis yells a fortnight later, following him upstairs and receiving a spray of cologne into his face in retaliation, “can you repeat that last part?”
Niall fiddles with his sleeves until Liam slaps his hand away and fixes the cufflinks himself. “The part where I really really like her and want you to leave before she gets here, for fucks sake, even the strongest people can’t stand you?”
Louis pouts and hands over his bow tie, previously hidden in the coffee jar until Niall told him where he was going. “No,” he says, “the part where you’re going to prom with her.”
“Fuck off with the condescension,” he scowls, tilting up his neck patiently as Harry steps in to fix the complicated knot. “You know I’m a sucker for acoustic bands and corsages.”
Zayn snorts and lowers the camera in his hands onto Liam’s shoulders with a kiss out of view. “And spiked punch.”
The doorbell rings downstairs and Niall lights up and tones it down in time to glare at them as he walks out the room.
“You don’t want to cascade down the stairs with Jesse McCartney in the background?” Harry exclaims, honestly, with big eyes and a huge camera around his neck. “We’re getting a photo of you two by the fireplace whether or not you want one!”
+
Zayn’s got him pressed face-down on their bed within twenty minutes, teeth scraping across his bare shoulder and his legs spread wide to feel the press of Zayn’s cock against his arse and it feels like a certain kind of torture, just for him, when they’re interrupted before they can get out of their sweatpants.
“You two are shameless,” Louis groans as they separate slowly, not without a kiss or three. He’s wearing tight jeans and an oversized sweater of Harry’s, with a Harry to match. “Public indecency should be defined by the number of times the two of you give each other that look like oh, I don’t know, right now, we are still here.”
“As fascinating as the two of you leaking serotonin and candle wax is not,” Harry teases, “we have reservations at Viva. Please fuck it out of your system so the scent of frustration wanes from the walls.”
Liam waits for the front door to close and bites at Zayn’s lips until he groans into his mouth. “We could,” he whispers, because Zayn’s taken to kneeling between his legs and slipping crooked slick fingers inside Liam until he whimpers and he loves the way Zayn thrusts against his leg when he grinds back and he wants, wants wants the more it promises. “I’m still—”
Zayn interrupts him with a kiss and a hand wriggled down the back of his sweatpants, like he can imagine what Liam’s thinking, the I’m still a little wide open from you fingering me in the shower after lunch just on his lips. They strip down in maybe the most inefficient way because Liam can’t take the thought of ending the kiss and Zayn refuses to move his thumb from the rim of Liam’s hole. “Bare?” he asks softly, since they got tested a week ago and Liam’s nodding frantically before he can say anything else.
The lube is still wedged between their pillows and Zayn slicks up his cock, eases Liam onto his back with a shaking hand on his hip, maybe from nerves or maybe from anticipation or maybe a little of both. Zayn kisses out something in Morse code into his neck as he slides in one, two, three fingers, always so damn ruthless, like he just wants to take and take and take until there’s nothing left for Liam to give.
“Zayn,” he whines, when he can’t stop the roll of his hips or the breathy moans which punctuate his want, “babe please don’t you want to—”
“Not if you call me that,” he laughs, but he’s hitching Liam’s legs over his shoulders and mouthing at his jaw sweetly as he thrusts in and—
oh
It’s dark in the room but Liam can still see Zayn’s eyes, blown wide and fluttering as they watch his cock slide into his arse with this kind of avid fascination that Liam wants to drink in. They’re hardly in sync and the slow slow fast slow is maddening and Liam doesn’t do anything to change it, just grinds upwards until Zayn’s cock sinks a little deeper.
Zayn drags a hand down the centre of his chest to touch all the places he loves most – the muscles over Liam’s hips, the rim of his hole, that vein along the underside of his dick. He balances precariously on one arm (with the scars, so Liam can mouth at them when it feels right) and jerks him off and the friction is still as intoxicating as it was the first time.
“Look at me,” Zayn says, like it’s possible to look away from the beads of sweat pooling in the hollow of his collarbone or the desperate look in his eyes or even the fading teeth marks bruising his lips red. His thumb rolls back Liam’s foreskin to drag over the head of his cock and Liam is fascinated, awestruck by the way Zayn’s losing all that control and tension caught in his shoulders because of him and he automatically presses his heels into Zayn’s back so their lips bump together and his cock grazes just so against his prostate and that’s all it takes before he’s coming all over his hand.
Zayn’s erratic and Liam loves the taste of how close he is on his lips. “Come on,” he urges, still shaking with how much he wants it, “come on, come for me—”
His hips still, right against Liam’s thighs, and the grin Zayn presses against his chin afterwards is sweet enough to burn right through him.
+
They’re backstage at their first show in almost four months and it’s true, the bullshit people say when they can feel your heart beating out of your chest, it’s like riding a bike and you’ll never forget how to do this and it’ll feel like it was just yesterday. The earpieces are still lined up in a straight line by the stage and Louis stretching in his skin tight jeans is just as oddly fascinating as it was before, and the crowd counting ten nine eight sounds like coming home.
(it’s different, of course, with the new set list so Harry can catch his breath and Zayn mouthing words into his neck)
His heart is racing but in the good way at three two when Zayn’s lips drag up to his jaw. “Ready for this?” he asks, with this dirty, slow kiss that Liam feels for hours after he says yes.
+
(halfway through loved you first, Zayn grins at him like there’s a joke in there somewhere Liam’s not meant to understand quite yet)
+
Liam’s so, so high on the buzz of the amps and the sound of Louis’ laugh and the taste of peppermint on Zayn’s lips that he feels insane, impulsive, like he’ll crawl out of his skin and into someone else’s if he doesn’t get it out of his blood.
Zayn notices right away – of course he does – and herds him into the car and right up against the front door the second they get home. “Want to blow you,” he mumbles, already on his knees, because this is what they do – they kiss when they can and tug each other into their axes and they say what they want after holding their tongues for so long. “Want to be whatever you need, Li.”
Liam loves that about him, the genuine ache in his voice like it’s something physical. He thumbs absently at Zayn’s lips and slips it into the space under his tongue when he opens up. Zayn tugs urgently at his jeans and traces his tongue over Liam’s first knuckle with that patient look in his eyes and, when Liam presses down until his jaw hinges open, his eyes fall shut.
“Just stay like that,” Liam groans and thrusts in as steady as he can with Zayn Malik on his knees for him.
His fingers automatically tangle in Zayn’s hair to hold him just there, right here, so the only movement is the product of the momentum of his hips and the helpless noises Zayn keeps making in the back of his throat.
Liam’s close from the adrenalin and the tongue tracing the shaft and the way Zayn’s lips twitch as he pulls out like he wants to suck on the head but wants to be what Liam wants more, and there’s something missing, something he wants, and he doesn’t figure it out until he says open that mouth for me, baby. Zayn just blinks at him like a fuck no and a fuck yes all at once and slacks his lips until Liam can hear the sound of his cock bumping against the back of Zayn’s throat. It’s obscene, the kind of filthy he always associated with keeping lube in the car, and he comes so hard he sees white.
Zayn mouths absently at his cock until Liam’s ready and the grin that crosses his lips when Liam nudges him backwards to the foot of the stairs is the kind of pleased he wants to taste. He’s careful as he tugs down Zayn’s jeans and presses his legs to his chest and anything but gentle after that, when he traces his tongue around Zayn’s hole and rubs his stubble on the inside of his thighs and strokes him too slowly until he comes with a curse.
Liam stays there, with his forehead pressed against the indent of Zayn’s hip and fingernails scraping along his scalp, until Niall knocks incessantly and yells at them to take it to the bedroom, you bastards, some of us want to sleep through the door.
+
The tattoo artist – the one Zayn had wanted, and Liam will always do anything, anything, anything for him – is in town that weekend so they catch a taxi over to his studio and sit side-by-side on the parlour chair while Zayn explains the concept behind the piece.
“It’s kind of the remnant of everywhere we’ve been,” he explains, and Liam doesn’t see anything in the practise outline traced onto his arm but chaos and colour but he trusts Zayn, knows it’s not just ambiguous shapes and vibrant shades and the silhouettes of something absent to him. “Like history and the modern era of expressionism colliding.”
Zayn feeds him little strips of red liquorice and holds his spare hand and makes a thousand soothing noises whenever Liam wrinkles his nose in pain and Liam thinks of that first tattoo, the line of words he felt etched into his bones even before a needle had touched his skin, and wonders if it feels the same to Zayn right now.
“It’s going to look incredible on you,” he says fervently, watching the artist knit something beautiful together with skin and ink. “Liam, fuck—”
The artist pauses to wipe away the spare ink and grin at them. “Keep it clean,” he teases, probably a little less serious than he should be because Liam can’t sit still when Zayn’s watching him like that.
“Tell me about the blue,” Liam says instead as Zayn lights up at the chance to talk poetic to him. “The part by my shoulder.”
“It’s symbolic of last April,” he whispers, a hand on Liam’s hair, gentle and tight at the same time. “Remember that forty-eight hour stopover in London before we went to Australia and we stayed at the museum instead of going home? It’s about the contrast between the British Royal Navy circa 1945 and the role of Sydney Harbour in modern society as a sight of leisure.”
Liam doesn’t say what he thinks – you’re too brilliant for me and how opposed would you be to talking like that when we fuck and wow wow wow – just stares at Zayn until he’s sure he knows that he wants to kiss him the second they leave and asks about the forest green on the inside of his elbow.
+
(Zayn doesn’t stop stroking the tattoo absently for weeks and Liam claims oblivious for the chance of Zayn rubbing aloe vera all over his shoulders and kissing him better)
+
It’s not instantaneous. There are still some days when all Liam wants is to lock himself in that empty room downstairs until I hope your damned plane crashes stops echoing in his head, but Zayn’s always sitting on the other side when he comes out and that’s all the difference.
They’re sitting around the dining room table in the seats they claimed months ago (Niall at the head, Louis and Harry on the other side of him and Zayn, close enough to kick four different boys without wriggling out of his seat) and Harry’s bragging about his newfound maturity because of his successful pork crackling and clearer psyche after months of abstinence—
Louis snorts. “S’not abstinence if it’s not by choice.”
Harry flicks over a forkful of his peas and steals his wine. They’re having a Sunday roast and just the idea of that would have made Liam laugh a year ago. “Well it’s still douchebaggery if it’s by choice, you twat.”
(Liam in collars has been ruled illegal since Zayn realised he could see one of the splatters of the tattoo in most of his shirts so the kiss pressed to his clavicle is no surprise)
“Better than being cockblocked by early admission to MIT,” Niall groans and their twined feet clumsily tap one of his.
The rest of the boys look at them expectantly because the absence of getting laid was one of the foundations of their relationship but Zayn just grins, right into his skin. “Sorry lads,” he teases. “We’re having fantastic sex. All the time. Everywhere.”
“Guess where I blew him a half-hour ago,” Liam laughs, just for the look of disgruntled horror and acceptance on Harry’s face. The conversation switches to the likelihood of a Brit winning America’s Next Top Model and Zayn kisses his cheek when he says they could if it was one of us and it hits him, it hits him like a fucking brick through the glass window overlooking the backyard. They know the supermarket backwards, held a fondue night for the neighbours and started whining about what the weather will do to their denims, and all these things designed to make them feel normal are suddenly so, so unimportant because he has this, he has them and he has Zayn, and that’s enough, it’s enough for him—
+
(he doesn’t say it then. Instead, he waits until they’re in the middle of a game of Mario Kart and says if you want to leave, I think I could get on a plane without having a panic attack in an airport, maybe so everyone except Zayn – and he remembers, of course you could, you’re Liam goddamn Payne – crashes)
+
Getting on the plane is the hardest thing Liam’s ever done. Zayn’s right beside him, though, squeezing his hand like a heartbeat because it’s always soothed them both and kissing his cheek, their tattoo, the nape of his neck, when he thinks they can get away with it.
They all hold hands on board and instead of spreading out like they usually do when they’re on a commercial plane, they squeeze together in a corner of business class with a pile of blankets and those lucky woven bracelets Louis bought them all from somewhere in Sweden.
He presses his forehead against Zayn’s and drinks him in, the look in his eyes, his wet lips, the hickey on his neck from Tuesday morning. “There’s something I really want to tell you,” he admits softly as the plane takes off, “and I’m not saying it now because I can hardly see straight but I can’t stop thinking about it and I’m definitely incapable of not thinking of you, so in seven hours, we’ll be home. And I’m going to tell you that I noun you.”
Zayn grins and even if it’s a little shaky, it’s still stunning. “Verb,” he corrects and ducks closer to kiss him stupid while their three best friends cheer from behind them.
+
When they land, Liam’s lips are chapped and dry from rehearsing I love you, I love you, I love you under his breath and he’s so, so ready that he doesn’t notice his phone in Zayn’s hand until it’s pressed into his own.
“Remember the voicemail from forever ago?” he asks. Liam plays dumb because they’ve got this – whispering between the sheets and reading comic books at midnight and sharing toast and kisses in the morning – down to an art.
“I was much too busy learning how to suck you off,” he teases and his heart’s throbbing out of his chest when Zayn grins at him and calls his message number.
Liam’s looked away a lot in the past few months and he knows he’s about to cry, about to start shaking, but there’s something brave in Zayn’s eyes that anchors him to the ground. “Liam,” Zayn says, distorted through the phone, and Liam’s falling in love. “It’s the middle of February and right now, I’m sneaking peeks at you through the plane window even though we’re meant to close the blinds for take off. You’re sitting on the bus and you’re about to find my lolly stash and I’m just certain I love you.”
Zayn grins indulgently at the look in his eyes and, months ago, laughs into the phone and adds— “I hid your phone so with any luck you won’t get this until after our date but it’s going to be the proof at our wedding that I loved you first.”
The message ends and Zayn looks a little embarrassed at that last bit and Liam burns the image into his memory. “Well you’re definitely wrong on that last word,” Liam teases cautiously and whispers eight letters into Zayn’s mouth and they trade wrong right wrong right until they’re in his apartment, curled up in a cold bed to keep each other warm.
+
A whole year later and they’re back in Chicago and it’s like they never left, with one of his shoes wedged under their mattress and the car keys in Niall’s old snapback and the paint stain on the door from their finally.
“Zayn,” he mumbles sleepily, just outside their bedroom and just after a second show, and he doesn’t have to say anything else because Zayn just rolls his eyes and holds open the sleeve so Liam can wriggle his fingers under and finds a scar off touch memory alone.
“Love you,” Zayn says and Liam doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of hearing that, or the way he always follows it with a kiss.
They’re fumbling for the door handle and this is so, so familiar, reminds him of being outside hotel rooms, in a hundred different public bathrooms, by the door of the plane where Zayn lips at his neck as they board. Liam kisses the underside of his jaw just for the way Zayn loses balance and leans close so Liam can wrap an arm under his arse and lift him up.
“Carrying me over the threshold?” Zayn teases, with fingers dancing down the front of his shirt to palm at the front of his jeans lazily. “You’re going to give a boy the wrong idea.”
(or the right one, Liam thinks, as hard as he can)
Kisses always make him lightheaded and Zayn gets this silly-happy smile when his lips are bitten raw that has been dizzying to Liam for years, now, so it’s no wonder that they end up slumped against the door with that vibrant shadow of Zayn’s back from half a lifetime ago right behind them.
They switch to mouthing lazily at each other’s throats and Liam can’t help himself. “I have something to ask you,” he whispers, between kisses, and Zayn doesn’t tense, just melts under the hand on his wrist and the other cradling his messy hair. “Will you move in with me?”
Zayn huffs into his mouth and Liam bites back the urge to backtrack and kisses him instead. “Aren’t we already?” he mumbles, but he doesn’t sound unsure, just indulgent, when Liam makes a noise of agreement. “I actually had something else in mind.”
There’s a loud thump from the other side of the door and then three identically outraged voices are shouting nope in an eerie type of unison. “Let me in this instant Zayn Malik,” Louis yells, tapping out that dumb rhythm with a certain urgency, and there’s something a lot like déjà vu in the air. “I can understand why you want the wedding night but seeing as things are heading in One Direc—”
“Oh shut it, Lou,” Harry scolds, and then, to them— “you are not proposing in a room that’s more dust and sex residue than it is oxygen. I didn’t read The Art of War when I was sixteen for the penultimate moment of your relationship to be when you are jetlagged and on a foundation of something else in mind.”
Zayn grins and uses the hand on Liam’s back to pull him closer and bite at his lip. “I guess he has a point,” he sighs, not romantic or breathy like he should be with Liam grinding against him, more like he’s coddling everyone under the roof. “Besides, I already have it planned out.”
“Does it involve a bath?” Liam teases, only half-joking because he’s thought of it, thought of a thousand situations where yes is always the answer, “maybe a voicemail?”
He buries his face in the crook of Liam’s neck. “More like the front row of The Winter Soldier,” Zayn admits and Liam’s sure he can feel the way his heart’s thumping out his chest.
There’s a reply and a kiss and a laugh on his lips when the pounding on the door gets a little more urgent. “Boys,” Niall scolds, “if you two are done with discussing your long and glorious life which will undoubtedly involve woodland creatures and sunshine streaming through an oak tree—”
(“maple,” Liam whispers into his hair, “like the one in the front yard.”)
“Don’t forget the The Lumineers swelling romantically in the background,” Harry cackles. “Or the nine dozen rose petals guiding the path to their forever—”
They blush and throw open the door. “The take-out is going cold,” Liam scolds, but he grins at Zayn when their fingers twine together on the way down the stairs.
They eat on the couch (Zayn half in his lap to grind down when the others aren’t watching) with reruns of Hannah Montana in the background and a thunderstorm outside.
“This is the dumbest show in the world,” Harry groans, even as he stares with this silly awed expression and gets tikka masala all over his cheeks from his fixation.
Zayn swallows the laksa Liam’s been feeding him and laughs into his shoulder. “You’ve worked lyrics from The Best of Both Worlds into a majority of our interviews.”
Louis’ arm is curled sweetly around Harry’s waist to hold Niall’s hand but that doesn’t stop him from laughing until he’s out of breath. “You cried in the movie when the crowd accepts her for who she really is.”
“I hate everyone in this house,” he grumbles, even as he tears up strips of paratha for all of them while they sing along to the opening credits.
Liam wakes up first to the smell of rain and the early sunlight in his eyes and, when he’s finished staring outside until his eyes burn gold, Zayn’s watching him sleepily from his favourite spot on Liam’s shoulder. He’s spent a lot of the past twelve months thinking about missed opportunities – the years it took for them to get their shit together, the tarmac in Iowa, the month they spent curled up in the same bed without realising the implications – and realises that he doesn’t want to miss this one. So he twists his neck to mouth lazily at Zayn’s lips and thinks that he was wrong, last year, when he said he’d never felt as alive as he did screaming at Louis from a foggy bus window because right now, with Zayn grinning into the kiss, he can’t help but think that maybe alive is just the new standard with Zayn Malik pressed against him.