1D RPF: all this unnecessary preamble (1/1)
Title: All This Unnecessary Preamble
Author: matchsticks_p
Pairing: Liam/Zayn, background Louis + Harry bromance that could be misconstrued as sexual (much as in real life…)
Summary: "Five times bottom!Zayn hooked up with some strange guy in a random city on tour, and one time he didn't," from this prompt at the One Direction kink meme.
Length: 3405 words
Rating: R for explicit language, but I feel like I should apologise for the surprising lack of actual porn in this. Sorry?
.
i.
They're in Detroit when Zayn stumbles into Louis and Harry's hotel room, late enough in the morning for all the rest of them to be up and having breakfast together. He's wearing last night's clothes and a sheepish smile, and ducking in with an apologetic "good morning" before collapsing onto the oversized armchair right next to Liam.
"Somebody was out late last night," Liam says. It's a completely inane thing to say, obvious and pointless, but Zayn's sweat reeks of alcohol and Liam wants to lay into him about being more responsible. He doesn't want Zayn to get tired of his nagging, though, so he settles for something safe and ends up saying that.
"Yeah, sorry. I stayed with a friend." Zayn looks down quickly, in that way people tend to interpret as shy, then looks up again and flashes Liam a smile. He reaches for the breakfast trays they've laid out and stuffs a piece of toast into his mouth.
"A friend? I didn't know you knew people here."
"I met him last night. He wanted to show me some other stuff so we left the club," Zayn mumbles, trying not to let crumbs fly out of his mouth.
"You stayed with someone you met last night?!" Liam's having trouble sticking to his plan to nag less. "That's not safe!"
He looks around for the other boys to back him up. Niall's focused on his eggs and doesn't seem overly concerned that their Zayn apparently stayed out with a total stranger last night and could've been abducted for a ransom or for weird experiments. Harry, bless him, at least has a slight frown on his face, eyes flicking back and forth between Liam and Zayn. But Louis is exchanging a knowing smirk with Zayn and now Liam is suspicious.
"What do you mean he wanted to show you some stuff?"
Zayn shrugs and finishes his toast. "You worry too much, Liam. Everything was fine. I'm here now, aren't I?" He smiles again, reaches over to ruffle Liam's hair, and before Liam can say anything else he's up and walking away to go take a shower.
They do a radio interview later and as usual, Zayn has very little to say. He looks knackered. The dj leaves him to his silence, more invested in grilling Harry and Louis about what traits they like in women, as though that has become a more interesting question since the last seven hundred times they were asked. It does give Liam some space to just look at Zayn, though, take in his bloodshot eyes and half-combed hair, the way he can't seem to find a comfortable way to sit.
Before their concert that night, Liam corners Louis in the green room and demands to know just what the hell is going on with Zayn.
"Nothing's going on with Zayn. He's an attractive young lad with a beautiful voice, exploring America for the first time without a care in the world, that's all," Louis says breezily. Louis says everything breezily. Liam thinks it's some sort of tactic.
"Is it drugs, Louis? You need to tell me if it's drugs. I know you and Zayn went to parties together for a year before the rest of us turned eighteen, and I'm not asking you to tell me everything you got up to. But you need to tell me if it's drugs."
Louis laughs, places his hands on Liam's shoulders and says, "No, our Zayn's not doing drugs. I would be the first to tattle if anyone was doing drugs. The success of our band depends on how pretty we look, the last thing we need is our teeth falling out from cocaine." He leans in and smacks a kiss onto Liam's cheek. "Relax, Liam. Zayn's just having fun discovering himself."
Liam wants to tell him that the thought of Zayn 'having fun discovering himself' is a lot more troubling than relaxing, but then the other boys come scurrying in. Harry runs flying into Louis while Niall jumps onto Liam's back, and Zayn's hand is suddenly hot in Liam's, squeezing tight. And then the five of them are sharing a group huddle, and then they're walking onto the stage and the lights are so bright that they can only hear the screaming of the crowd without seeing them, and then the music is starting, and as he raises his mic to his lips Liam forgets his worries.
ii.
They're in Toronto when Liam sees a guy pulling Zayn by the wrist into the lavatories.
Louis is at the bar, taking advantage of the fact that the drinking age in Ontario is nineteen and he can order stupidly girly cocktails with the law on his side. Harry is with him, taking advantage of the fact that he's a cute lad in a famous band and he can order whatever drinks he wants as well, the law be damned. Niall's somewhere on the dance floor, buried in a sea of women. Liam feels like he's the only one who's noticed what happened with Zayn, and he feels like he should investigate.
He pushes open the door to the sound of Zayn's long, keening moans. It somehow doesn't feel like a complete shock that Zayn is making out with a man. He's never mentioned whether he would, and so Liam's never assumed that he wouldn't. But the man looks like he's being a little too rough, holding Zayn up against the wall with a thigh jammed between his legs and a hand around his neck. Zayn's not tiny but he looks positively waifish compared to this guy, who's bulky with muscles and seems to be using his weight to keep Zayn in place. A loud "Oi!" bursts out of Liam at the sight.
They break apart and turn to look at him.
The realisation that he's in a small confined space watching his best friend discreetly try to pull his hands out of a random guy's jeans hits him hard, all at once. It's silent except for the muffled house music thumping outside, and Liam clears his throat awkwardly. "Are you, um. I mean. I just wanted to make sure you were-are you okay here?"
Zayn's smiling at him again, that damned smile. His voice sounds amused when he says, "Yeah Liam, it's all cool."
"Alright. Cool. I'll just-" he jerks his thumb toward the door. "I'll just show myself out then, yeah?"
He exits the toilet before he can embarrass himself further, and runs a hand over his face. Christ.
iii.
They're in Albany, eating at a 24-hour diner after a show rather than sleeping even though it's so late at night that it's become obscenely early in the morning again. Harry had insisted that they needed to experience an authentic American burger, or maybe Louis had insisted. Sometimes their brains work in tandem so much that it's hard to tell what thought came from which one of them, even for Liam, who knows them better than just about anyone in the universe. They're kind of like one very strange person in two bodies, sometimes.
Like right now, for example, when they're sitting at their booth just pelting each other with authentic American french fries as hard as they can, giggling like mad people, genuine American ketchup flying everywhere. Liam feels like an underpaid babysitter, trying to get them to sit down and finish eating. Niall pays them no mind, happy to work on polishing off his second burger. Zayn has walked away to go check out the authentic American diner décor ages ago, tired of being a civilian casualty to food shrapnel bouncing off his friends.
"Oh for god's sake Louis," Liam says as he feels more ketchup hitting his arm. "You're the one who wanted to come here in the first place. If all you wanted was to have a food fight we could've stayed in and done that."
"No, Harry was the one who wanted to come. And Harry's the one who threw a chip at me first. You can't expect me to take that lying down without retaliation. I'm merely defending my honour."
Harry bursts into a fit of laughter at that, as though it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. And then he throws a pickle slice at Louis's head.
"Right," Liam says, rolling his eyes. He wipes ketchup off himself with a napkin. "Well, could we negotiate a truce here and just finish up? We do need to eventually get some sleep tonight and god knows where Zayn's wandered off to."
"He's just right over there," Harry says. "By the jukebox."
Liam looks, and Harry's right. Zayn is sitting at the counter on a swivel stool, getting sweet-talked by a ruggedly handsome older man next to an actual jukebox, like it's the 1950s. The man is standing while Zayn sits, and even though it's a high bar stool the man is still slightly taller, so that he leans down and over Zayn a bit as he murmurs something no doubt inappropriate. Zayn gazes up through his eyelashes at him, looking heartbreakingly sincere.
"Guys, guys," Liam whispers, uneasy. "I think Zayn might be getting played. Look at the way that guy's moving his arm around him. He's way too smooth to be serious; he just wants to get into Zayn's pants and then break his heart."
Across the table from him, Harry and Niall drop their food and turn to look at each other, eyes comically wide and eyebrows waggling like they're signalling something to each other.
"What?" Liam demands.
Their heads whip back to look at Liam. "Oh, nothing," Harry says, sounding much too casual. "Don't you think maybe you should talk to Zayn-"
Louis kicks him viciously under the table, and Harry jerks back with a yelp.
"What Harry means, love," Louis says, throwing his arm around Liam's shoulders, "is that you don't need to worry about Zayn's delicate pink crystal heart, because you see, the thing about Zayn, right, is that he just likes to fuck a lot."
Niall breaks down cackling like a hyena, and Harry's laughing too, until they see Liam's face. Not that he disapproves of Zayn's adult right to enjoy his body or whatever, but Liam feels like they shouldn't be talking about him like that.
"Oh, Liam," Harry says, sobering up, and he and Niall both reach across to pat him on the side of the head. "Hang in there. Zayn'll come around."
Liam's pretty sure he doesn't know what they're on about.
When Zayn tells them they should leave without him and he'll catch up later, Liam has to resist the urge to just bodily carry him back with them.
iv.
They're about ready to leave Boston when Zayn climbs onto the tour bus after a brief disappearance to god knows where, looking utterly debauched. His clothes sit crookedly on him, his shirt is missing a button, his hair is a mess, he has a bite mark under his jaw that will definitely bloom into a bruise later, and he smells unmistakeably of sex. He had only been gone for half an hour.
He sits down gingerly, wincing, clearly sore for reasons Liam tries desperately to keep himself from imagining.
"You alright?" Liam asks.
"Yeah, I'm great."
When they say Zayn is the quiet one, for the most part it's just nicer way of saying that Zayn doesn’t pay a lot of attention in interviews and would rather fall half-asleep than bother trying to answer questions. But sometimes it means that Zayn is hard to read. It's hard to tell if anything's ever wrong, because he's content to just sit it out without making a sound.
"No, I mean really, are you alright?" Liam tries not to sound like a total mother hen about it, but he is feeling rather tender toward Zayn at the moment, only just now realising how often he lets himself get shagged by anonymous strangers. He's literally just come back from a quickie in an alleyway, or wherever it is that people go to have quickies. "Are you happy? You do know you don't have to, right? You know you can have a proper relationship if you want it, and it doesn't matter if it's with a man. The band will support you a hundred percent. You're…you deserve to be treated well, Zayn-you know that, right? I hope you don't feel like you deserve to be used or anything."
Zayn laughs, and then bites his lip like he doesn't want to be laughing. Liam concentrates very hard on not thinking about how, less than half an hour ago, some random bloke was probably also biting on that same lip.
"No, I know, I really am fine. It's not a weird self-esteem issue, I promise. I'm just having a good time." He pulls Liam down onto the seat next to him, looks him unblinkingly in the eye. "It's really sweet that you're looking out for me like that, even though you're actually younger than me and I do have a mum of my own, so really you could loosen up a little."
Zayn gives him a quick cuddle before he gets up to change into cleaner clothes. Despite the reassurance, it leaves Liam feeling strangely unsatisfied.
v.
They're in Durham when Zayn goes out with Louis and Harry while Liam volunteers to stay in with Niall, who's feeling a bit sick.
To give them fair dues, they do ask about a million times if he's sure and if Niall's alright and if they shouldn't just all stay in. But Niall just tells them to drink more in his honour and Liam waves them out the door, consciously trying not to tell them to be extra careful like he's their actual father.
Liam and Niall play Mario Kart on Niall's hotel bed, blankets bundled around Niall so he doesn't catch a chill. His skin is pale and waxy and his voice sounds plugged up and miserable. As the evening goes on, he slumps further and further into Liam's shoulder, but his persistent coughing keeps him from being able to fall asleep. The impulse to ruffle his hair and treat him like a sad puppy is almost unbearable, the poor guy looks so pathetic. And yet he's still somehow managing to wipe the floor with Liam at Mario Kart.
Either Niall's cold is giving him super gaming powers, or Liam's distracted by wondering what Zayn is getting himself into. Zayn seems to have a type, from what Liam can tell. Bigger, taller, older men, who look like they might rough him up a bit, who can bend him backward to kiss him and bend him forward to…well. You know. Liam wonders if it'll be in an alley again, or a public toilet, or a motel room paid for by the hour, or some new sordid location that he can't even imagine. If Liam had a boy like Zayn, he wouldn't take him anywhere filthy like that. He would take him-
"I'm glad you stayed in with me," Niall slurs, interrupting Liam's thoughts as his little Nintendo avatar flies past Liam's on the screen. "Even though you would rather be out stalking Zayn."
"I don't want to be stalking Zayn. I just worry about him. That's totally different."
"Why do you think you need to worry about him?"
"I don't think I need to, I just do." Liam's fingers mash the buttons, to no avail. Maybe he should admit he's just particularly bad at this game.
"But why?"
Liam sighs. Illness has this funny way of regressing people so they sound like children. "Zayn, he-you know Zayn. He says he's fine, but there's no way he's actually fine because this isn't the sort of thing people do when they're fine. Or at least it's not the sort of thing Zayn would do, because Zayn isn't like that. He's too good for all that."
Niall snorts, which with his cold turns into a snuffling cough, but as soon as he recovers he snorts at Liam again. "Are you even listening to yourself? Of course it's the sort of thing that someone does when they're fine, and also a nineteen-year-old lad. You're just inventing reasons for it not to be fine because you are so jealous, my friend. 'Ooooh Zayn is too good for all that, he's so perfect, he's so sensitive and sweet and just the right amount of tragic!' And oh look, I just beat you for the fifth time in a row."
Liam looks at the TV screen to see Niall's character soar to victory once more. And then he turns back to look at Niall, who's probably off his face on cough syrup, but isn't technically wrong.
And he thinks, Oh ,shit.
6.
They're in Nashville, and of course the thing to do in Nashville is to experience a Dixie bar, so they go, despite knowing nothing about country music or how to dance to it. Liam feels quite at home in all the plaid, but that's where his comfort zone ends. Everything else about the bar is flying right over his head.
Niall wastes no time flirting with one of the bartenders, who has a cowgirl hat and bikini top on. She's laughing at him for his dangerously uncool pickup lines, but she also looks like she's falling for his clumsy boy charm despite herself. Harry and Louis are being the conjoined twins they sometimes are, attached at the hip while also talking to a couple of girls at the same time. They're inviting them to dance, and even though Harry and Louis are actually holding hands with each other, the girls still accept. This leaves Liam and Zayn alone with each other.
They end up dancing together, somehow, awkwardly bopping to the unfamiliar rhythms of top forty country. Everyone around them has cowboy boots and big belt buckles on, and a few times they're called upon to join an impromptu line dance despite knowing literally none of the steps. After yet another botched attempt at the Cadillac Ranch, Zayn's laughing so hard that he has to clutch Liam's shoulders to keep from falling over.
Liam's not drunk, because he prefers at least one of them stay somewhat sober when they're out in public together, just in case. But in this moment, he feels drunk. The blood rushes to his face and he feels alternately hot and cold, tingly and buzzy like there are trapped bees under his skin and in his head. He can't hear Zayn's laughter over the loud music, but he can feel it shaking through him. He can't see Zayn's eyes too clearly in the darkness of the club, either, but he knows exactly what they would look like because he feels like he's spent his whole life memorising them.
"Hey Zayn?" he says, pulling forward to press his mouth right against Zayn's ear so he can hear him, "Maybe you shouldn't go home with some guy tonight."
Zayn backs up to look at Liam, traces of a smile still lingering on his face. "We've been through this, Liam. It's very sweet, but again, I-"
"No, I mean maybe you should go home with me tonight."
Zayn stops short. He stares at Liam, tilting his head slightly, emotions inscrutable to Liam aside from the amusement that's easy to read in the surprised opening of his lips.
The music changes. Instead of upbeat pop country, the opening notes of something gentle and sappy float through the bar, and the people around them start coupling up to slow dance. Zayn is still looking at Liam, both of them standing still, in stark contrast to the swinging movement of the dancers surrounding them. A very tall, very dark, very handsome man in a too-tight button-down that shows off his biceps taps Zayn on the shoulder and asks if he might cut in for a dance.
Fuck my life, Liam thinks, because the stranger fits the exact definition of Zayn's type so much that it hurts. He turns his head, not wanting to watch Zayn walk away.
"Thanks, but no," Zayn says to the stranger. "I'm good here."
And before Liam can fully register what's happening, Zayn has put his arms around his shoulders, wrists interlocking at the back of Liam's neck, and they're swaying to the music.
.end
eta: now also available on AO3 for those who prefer that platform. :)
Author: matchsticks_p
Pairing: Liam/Zayn, background Louis + Harry bromance that could be misconstrued as sexual (much as in real life…)
Summary: "Five times bottom!Zayn hooked up with some strange guy in a random city on tour, and one time he didn't," from this prompt at the One Direction kink meme.
Length: 3405 words
Rating: R for explicit language, but I feel like I should apologise for the surprising lack of actual porn in this. Sorry?
.
i.
They're in Detroit when Zayn stumbles into Louis and Harry's hotel room, late enough in the morning for all the rest of them to be up and having breakfast together. He's wearing last night's clothes and a sheepish smile, and ducking in with an apologetic "good morning" before collapsing onto the oversized armchair right next to Liam.
"Somebody was out late last night," Liam says. It's a completely inane thing to say, obvious and pointless, but Zayn's sweat reeks of alcohol and Liam wants to lay into him about being more responsible. He doesn't want Zayn to get tired of his nagging, though, so he settles for something safe and ends up saying that.
"Yeah, sorry. I stayed with a friend." Zayn looks down quickly, in that way people tend to interpret as shy, then looks up again and flashes Liam a smile. He reaches for the breakfast trays they've laid out and stuffs a piece of toast into his mouth.
"A friend? I didn't know you knew people here."
"I met him last night. He wanted to show me some other stuff so we left the club," Zayn mumbles, trying not to let crumbs fly out of his mouth.
"You stayed with someone you met last night?!" Liam's having trouble sticking to his plan to nag less. "That's not safe!"
He looks around for the other boys to back him up. Niall's focused on his eggs and doesn't seem overly concerned that their Zayn apparently stayed out with a total stranger last night and could've been abducted for a ransom or for weird experiments. Harry, bless him, at least has a slight frown on his face, eyes flicking back and forth between Liam and Zayn. But Louis is exchanging a knowing smirk with Zayn and now Liam is suspicious.
"What do you mean he wanted to show you some stuff?"
Zayn shrugs and finishes his toast. "You worry too much, Liam. Everything was fine. I'm here now, aren't I?" He smiles again, reaches over to ruffle Liam's hair, and before Liam can say anything else he's up and walking away to go take a shower.
They do a radio interview later and as usual, Zayn has very little to say. He looks knackered. The dj leaves him to his silence, more invested in grilling Harry and Louis about what traits they like in women, as though that has become a more interesting question since the last seven hundred times they were asked. It does give Liam some space to just look at Zayn, though, take in his bloodshot eyes and half-combed hair, the way he can't seem to find a comfortable way to sit.
Before their concert that night, Liam corners Louis in the green room and demands to know just what the hell is going on with Zayn.
"Nothing's going on with Zayn. He's an attractive young lad with a beautiful voice, exploring America for the first time without a care in the world, that's all," Louis says breezily. Louis says everything breezily. Liam thinks it's some sort of tactic.
"Is it drugs, Louis? You need to tell me if it's drugs. I know you and Zayn went to parties together for a year before the rest of us turned eighteen, and I'm not asking you to tell me everything you got up to. But you need to tell me if it's drugs."
Louis laughs, places his hands on Liam's shoulders and says, "No, our Zayn's not doing drugs. I would be the first to tattle if anyone was doing drugs. The success of our band depends on how pretty we look, the last thing we need is our teeth falling out from cocaine." He leans in and smacks a kiss onto Liam's cheek. "Relax, Liam. Zayn's just having fun discovering himself."
Liam wants to tell him that the thought of Zayn 'having fun discovering himself' is a lot more troubling than relaxing, but then the other boys come scurrying in. Harry runs flying into Louis while Niall jumps onto Liam's back, and Zayn's hand is suddenly hot in Liam's, squeezing tight. And then the five of them are sharing a group huddle, and then they're walking onto the stage and the lights are so bright that they can only hear the screaming of the crowd without seeing them, and then the music is starting, and as he raises his mic to his lips Liam forgets his worries.
ii.
They're in Toronto when Liam sees a guy pulling Zayn by the wrist into the lavatories.
Louis is at the bar, taking advantage of the fact that the drinking age in Ontario is nineteen and he can order stupidly girly cocktails with the law on his side. Harry is with him, taking advantage of the fact that he's a cute lad in a famous band and he can order whatever drinks he wants as well, the law be damned. Niall's somewhere on the dance floor, buried in a sea of women. Liam feels like he's the only one who's noticed what happened with Zayn, and he feels like he should investigate.
He pushes open the door to the sound of Zayn's long, keening moans. It somehow doesn't feel like a complete shock that Zayn is making out with a man. He's never mentioned whether he would, and so Liam's never assumed that he wouldn't. But the man looks like he's being a little too rough, holding Zayn up against the wall with a thigh jammed between his legs and a hand around his neck. Zayn's not tiny but he looks positively waifish compared to this guy, who's bulky with muscles and seems to be using his weight to keep Zayn in place. A loud "Oi!" bursts out of Liam at the sight.
They break apart and turn to look at him.
The realisation that he's in a small confined space watching his best friend discreetly try to pull his hands out of a random guy's jeans hits him hard, all at once. It's silent except for the muffled house music thumping outside, and Liam clears his throat awkwardly. "Are you, um. I mean. I just wanted to make sure you were-are you okay here?"
Zayn's smiling at him again, that damned smile. His voice sounds amused when he says, "Yeah Liam, it's all cool."
"Alright. Cool. I'll just-" he jerks his thumb toward the door. "I'll just show myself out then, yeah?"
He exits the toilet before he can embarrass himself further, and runs a hand over his face. Christ.
iii.
They're in Albany, eating at a 24-hour diner after a show rather than sleeping even though it's so late at night that it's become obscenely early in the morning again. Harry had insisted that they needed to experience an authentic American burger, or maybe Louis had insisted. Sometimes their brains work in tandem so much that it's hard to tell what thought came from which one of them, even for Liam, who knows them better than just about anyone in the universe. They're kind of like one very strange person in two bodies, sometimes.
Like right now, for example, when they're sitting at their booth just pelting each other with authentic American french fries as hard as they can, giggling like mad people, genuine American ketchup flying everywhere. Liam feels like an underpaid babysitter, trying to get them to sit down and finish eating. Niall pays them no mind, happy to work on polishing off his second burger. Zayn has walked away to go check out the authentic American diner décor ages ago, tired of being a civilian casualty to food shrapnel bouncing off his friends.
"Oh for god's sake Louis," Liam says as he feels more ketchup hitting his arm. "You're the one who wanted to come here in the first place. If all you wanted was to have a food fight we could've stayed in and done that."
"No, Harry was the one who wanted to come. And Harry's the one who threw a chip at me first. You can't expect me to take that lying down without retaliation. I'm merely defending my honour."
Harry bursts into a fit of laughter at that, as though it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. And then he throws a pickle slice at Louis's head.
"Right," Liam says, rolling his eyes. He wipes ketchup off himself with a napkin. "Well, could we negotiate a truce here and just finish up? We do need to eventually get some sleep tonight and god knows where Zayn's wandered off to."
"He's just right over there," Harry says. "By the jukebox."
Liam looks, and Harry's right. Zayn is sitting at the counter on a swivel stool, getting sweet-talked by a ruggedly handsome older man next to an actual jukebox, like it's the 1950s. The man is standing while Zayn sits, and even though it's a high bar stool the man is still slightly taller, so that he leans down and over Zayn a bit as he murmurs something no doubt inappropriate. Zayn gazes up through his eyelashes at him, looking heartbreakingly sincere.
"Guys, guys," Liam whispers, uneasy. "I think Zayn might be getting played. Look at the way that guy's moving his arm around him. He's way too smooth to be serious; he just wants to get into Zayn's pants and then break his heart."
Across the table from him, Harry and Niall drop their food and turn to look at each other, eyes comically wide and eyebrows waggling like they're signalling something to each other.
"What?" Liam demands.
Their heads whip back to look at Liam. "Oh, nothing," Harry says, sounding much too casual. "Don't you think maybe you should talk to Zayn-"
Louis kicks him viciously under the table, and Harry jerks back with a yelp.
"What Harry means, love," Louis says, throwing his arm around Liam's shoulders, "is that you don't need to worry about Zayn's delicate pink crystal heart, because you see, the thing about Zayn, right, is that he just likes to fuck a lot."
Niall breaks down cackling like a hyena, and Harry's laughing too, until they see Liam's face. Not that he disapproves of Zayn's adult right to enjoy his body or whatever, but Liam feels like they shouldn't be talking about him like that.
"Oh, Liam," Harry says, sobering up, and he and Niall both reach across to pat him on the side of the head. "Hang in there. Zayn'll come around."
Liam's pretty sure he doesn't know what they're on about.
When Zayn tells them they should leave without him and he'll catch up later, Liam has to resist the urge to just bodily carry him back with them.
iv.
They're about ready to leave Boston when Zayn climbs onto the tour bus after a brief disappearance to god knows where, looking utterly debauched. His clothes sit crookedly on him, his shirt is missing a button, his hair is a mess, he has a bite mark under his jaw that will definitely bloom into a bruise later, and he smells unmistakeably of sex. He had only been gone for half an hour.
He sits down gingerly, wincing, clearly sore for reasons Liam tries desperately to keep himself from imagining.
"You alright?" Liam asks.
"Yeah, I'm great."
When they say Zayn is the quiet one, for the most part it's just nicer way of saying that Zayn doesn’t pay a lot of attention in interviews and would rather fall half-asleep than bother trying to answer questions. But sometimes it means that Zayn is hard to read. It's hard to tell if anything's ever wrong, because he's content to just sit it out without making a sound.
"No, I mean really, are you alright?" Liam tries not to sound like a total mother hen about it, but he is feeling rather tender toward Zayn at the moment, only just now realising how often he lets himself get shagged by anonymous strangers. He's literally just come back from a quickie in an alleyway, or wherever it is that people go to have quickies. "Are you happy? You do know you don't have to, right? You know you can have a proper relationship if you want it, and it doesn't matter if it's with a man. The band will support you a hundred percent. You're…you deserve to be treated well, Zayn-you know that, right? I hope you don't feel like you deserve to be used or anything."
Zayn laughs, and then bites his lip like he doesn't want to be laughing. Liam concentrates very hard on not thinking about how, less than half an hour ago, some random bloke was probably also biting on that same lip.
"No, I know, I really am fine. It's not a weird self-esteem issue, I promise. I'm just having a good time." He pulls Liam down onto the seat next to him, looks him unblinkingly in the eye. "It's really sweet that you're looking out for me like that, even though you're actually younger than me and I do have a mum of my own, so really you could loosen up a little."
Zayn gives him a quick cuddle before he gets up to change into cleaner clothes. Despite the reassurance, it leaves Liam feeling strangely unsatisfied.
v.
They're in Durham when Zayn goes out with Louis and Harry while Liam volunteers to stay in with Niall, who's feeling a bit sick.
To give them fair dues, they do ask about a million times if he's sure and if Niall's alright and if they shouldn't just all stay in. But Niall just tells them to drink more in his honour and Liam waves them out the door, consciously trying not to tell them to be extra careful like he's their actual father.
Liam and Niall play Mario Kart on Niall's hotel bed, blankets bundled around Niall so he doesn't catch a chill. His skin is pale and waxy and his voice sounds plugged up and miserable. As the evening goes on, he slumps further and further into Liam's shoulder, but his persistent coughing keeps him from being able to fall asleep. The impulse to ruffle his hair and treat him like a sad puppy is almost unbearable, the poor guy looks so pathetic. And yet he's still somehow managing to wipe the floor with Liam at Mario Kart.
Either Niall's cold is giving him super gaming powers, or Liam's distracted by wondering what Zayn is getting himself into. Zayn seems to have a type, from what Liam can tell. Bigger, taller, older men, who look like they might rough him up a bit, who can bend him backward to kiss him and bend him forward to…well. You know. Liam wonders if it'll be in an alley again, or a public toilet, or a motel room paid for by the hour, or some new sordid location that he can't even imagine. If Liam had a boy like Zayn, he wouldn't take him anywhere filthy like that. He would take him-
"I'm glad you stayed in with me," Niall slurs, interrupting Liam's thoughts as his little Nintendo avatar flies past Liam's on the screen. "Even though you would rather be out stalking Zayn."
"I don't want to be stalking Zayn. I just worry about him. That's totally different."
"Why do you think you need to worry about him?"
"I don't think I need to, I just do." Liam's fingers mash the buttons, to no avail. Maybe he should admit he's just particularly bad at this game.
"But why?"
Liam sighs. Illness has this funny way of regressing people so they sound like children. "Zayn, he-you know Zayn. He says he's fine, but there's no way he's actually fine because this isn't the sort of thing people do when they're fine. Or at least it's not the sort of thing Zayn would do, because Zayn isn't like that. He's too good for all that."
Niall snorts, which with his cold turns into a snuffling cough, but as soon as he recovers he snorts at Liam again. "Are you even listening to yourself? Of course it's the sort of thing that someone does when they're fine, and also a nineteen-year-old lad. You're just inventing reasons for it not to be fine because you are so jealous, my friend. 'Ooooh Zayn is too good for all that, he's so perfect, he's so sensitive and sweet and just the right amount of tragic!' And oh look, I just beat you for the fifth time in a row."
Liam looks at the TV screen to see Niall's character soar to victory once more. And then he turns back to look at Niall, who's probably off his face on cough syrup, but isn't technically wrong.
And he thinks, Oh ,shit.
6.
They're in Nashville, and of course the thing to do in Nashville is to experience a Dixie bar, so they go, despite knowing nothing about country music or how to dance to it. Liam feels quite at home in all the plaid, but that's where his comfort zone ends. Everything else about the bar is flying right over his head.
Niall wastes no time flirting with one of the bartenders, who has a cowgirl hat and bikini top on. She's laughing at him for his dangerously uncool pickup lines, but she also looks like she's falling for his clumsy boy charm despite herself. Harry and Louis are being the conjoined twins they sometimes are, attached at the hip while also talking to a couple of girls at the same time. They're inviting them to dance, and even though Harry and Louis are actually holding hands with each other, the girls still accept. This leaves Liam and Zayn alone with each other.
They end up dancing together, somehow, awkwardly bopping to the unfamiliar rhythms of top forty country. Everyone around them has cowboy boots and big belt buckles on, and a few times they're called upon to join an impromptu line dance despite knowing literally none of the steps. After yet another botched attempt at the Cadillac Ranch, Zayn's laughing so hard that he has to clutch Liam's shoulders to keep from falling over.
Liam's not drunk, because he prefers at least one of them stay somewhat sober when they're out in public together, just in case. But in this moment, he feels drunk. The blood rushes to his face and he feels alternately hot and cold, tingly and buzzy like there are trapped bees under his skin and in his head. He can't hear Zayn's laughter over the loud music, but he can feel it shaking through him. He can't see Zayn's eyes too clearly in the darkness of the club, either, but he knows exactly what they would look like because he feels like he's spent his whole life memorising them.
"Hey Zayn?" he says, pulling forward to press his mouth right against Zayn's ear so he can hear him, "Maybe you shouldn't go home with some guy tonight."
Zayn backs up to look at Liam, traces of a smile still lingering on his face. "We've been through this, Liam. It's very sweet, but again, I-"
"No, I mean maybe you should go home with me tonight."
Zayn stops short. He stares at Liam, tilting his head slightly, emotions inscrutable to Liam aside from the amusement that's easy to read in the surprised opening of his lips.
The music changes. Instead of upbeat pop country, the opening notes of something gentle and sappy float through the bar, and the people around them start coupling up to slow dance. Zayn is still looking at Liam, both of them standing still, in stark contrast to the swinging movement of the dancers surrounding them. A very tall, very dark, very handsome man in a too-tight button-down that shows off his biceps taps Zayn on the shoulder and asks if he might cut in for a dance.
Fuck my life, Liam thinks, because the stranger fits the exact definition of Zayn's type so much that it hurts. He turns his head, not wanting to watch Zayn walk away.
"Thanks, but no," Zayn says to the stranger. "I'm good here."
And before Liam can fully register what's happening, Zayn has put his arms around his shoulders, wrists interlocking at the back of Liam's neck, and they're swaying to the music.
.end
eta: now also available on AO3 for those who prefer that platform. :)