(no subject)
it's not just where you make your bed
Liam/Zayn, pre-OT5 h/c fic for harriet_vane, a hundred years after it was promised.
pg-13, 4,502 words, untrue.
Liam is more embarrassed about breaking his toe than anything else. It’s neither the kind of injury you can really boast about nor one that you can ignore. It happens the day of their first gig in America, and that’s rotten luck, but it doesn’t really change anything. He’s adamant that it won’t keep him from performing, and it doesn’t, but it bloody hurts.
The others all try to come with him to the emergency room and Liam gets close to having to close Zayn’s fingers in the door of the van to keep him from climbing in after him. Liam gets it. It’s kind of uncomfortably familiar. None of them have gotten hurt since Louis got stung by that sea urchin at judge’s houses, and it’s not as though they’ve spent every single waking moment together since, but Liam figures from everyone’s reaction that he’s not the only one who would really rather that any time they spend apart is by choice and done in full health.
Liam spends two hours waiting to be x-rayed, getting x-rayed, and waiting for someone to read his x-rays and give him a verdict. The boys are supposed to be doing final run-throughs of stage positioning now that they’ve finally sorted the band set up, but Liam barely has time to finish replying to one text before his phone is vibrating with another. It makes the hours fly by.
He calls Louis to tell them that he’s fine, he’s just broken one toe and it won’t mean he can’t dance. He doesn’t even realize he’s on speakerphone until Niall yells something in the background about how he couldn’t dance to begin with. Just before he hangs up they all shout various versions of ‘goodbye’ at him, and he can’t tell what any of them actually say, but the sound of their voices makes him feel better anyway.
He’s given a set of crutches to use if he needs to, though the doctors say he shouldn’t and that’s a challenge that Liam readily accepts. He hobbles out to the van, batting away would-be helping hands and glaring at anyone foolish enough to start to argue.
Now that he can’t tell himself that it’s nothing, it’s not so easy to ignore the pain and the flare of embarrassment that burns across his face when he thinks about the fact that he accidentally broke one of his own bones. He sits in silence on the way back, and graciously allows himself fifteen minutes to wallow and berate himself before he turns his focus toward pretending that it never happened. His band don’t need him injured or moping, so Liam decides that he will be neither.
It quickly becomes an afterthought at most.
Once he can say he’s had it checked out he waves off offers of rest, pockets his painkillers with absolutely no intention of taking any for any reason and heads straight back to the arena to pick up where he left off.
----
At first no-one says anything about it.
Liam catches Louis frowning at the crutches when Paul sets them against a door in the dressing room, and his first near stumble finds him instantly surrounded - all four of them there in an instant; Niall and Harry's hands on each of his shoulders, Zayn's at his waist and Louis' fingers clenched hard around his elbow.
It's just that first shock of forgetting that some things send pain shooting up through his foot, though, and it's a lesson he learns quickly. He huffs something nearly like a laugh and shakes his head and gently shoves them each away, only letting his hands linger over Zayn's for a split second before he's counting them down again and getting it right this time.
For the rest of the afternoon they give Liam his space by staying by his side exactly like normal but not talking about it.
It's as if they know that when it's acknowledged Liam remembers to feel guilty, remembers to be royally ticked off at himself for being so clumsy in the first place. They've each gotten pretty good at knowing what they need, collectively and personally, and the only slip up he can pin on them today is the way they watch him so closely, looking for some sign of discomfort or a desire to talk about it, maybe. But there's nothing to talk about, and Liam isn't going to let them see that he's hurt when there's nothing any of them can do about it.
It's hardly major, and it's all his own fault. There's nothing for it but to get on.
----
The show goes fine, absolutely to schedule besides a couple of points where Liam has to sit on the edge of the couch or find excuses flimsy at best to stride up to one of the others and sling an arm around their shoulders, letting them take some of his weight for a second.
Luckily they've never actually needed any excuse at all to help themselves to one another's space, and they each react in exactly the same way - by instantly wrapping their arm around his waist and pulling him in, trying to help as much as he'll let them.
That's not really very much, but it's more than enough to get him through it.
----
The next few days are more of the same, shows and interviews and appearances and signings here and there.
After the show in Fairfax Liam sits in the car on the way back to the hotel and thinks very seriously about actually taking the painkillers he's been prescribed for all of six seconds before Harry sits forward from the seat behind and hugs his head for no apparent reason. The ensuing scuffle is sufficient distraction from the pain flaring hot up across the entire length of his leg, it feels like, and before they check out the next morning Liam leaves the little vial of tablets hidden away at the back of a drawer in his room, hurriedly slamming it shut when Zayn appears to accompany him downstairs.
Anyone else would get a lecture for treating him like an invalid, but Zayn has always been able to get away with a little bit more than Liam would afford anyone else, and he knows it. He’s not shy about it, either.
----
After their show in Rutherford, Liam thinks of the tablets tucked away inside a desk in another city with regretful fondness, and then takes matters into ... well, someone else's hands, really. He temporarily and crestfallenly admits defeat and lets Paul carry him from the dressing room out to the car after the show.
And that's when it starts.
Because the other four are like sharks who've caught the scent of blood in the water now that Liam has admitted weakness of some sort or indicated that he’s susceptible to care, as they seem to see it.
He's awoken the sleeping giant that is his band's apparent desire to baby him as best they each know how.
----
For Niall that comes down to food. As most things do.
The general mayhem that routinely tempers their pre-show process all but comes to a complete standstill when Niall fixes a plate of food and carries it over to where Liam is sitting with his foot propped up.
Every pair of eyes in the room is on them when Niall sets the plate balancing across Liam’s knee and hands him a fork, smiling. Liam accepts the fork because he hasn’t got much choice when Niall is pressing it into his hand, but he doesn’t even look at the food. He very carefully maintains eye contact with Niall instead when he says,
“... aren’t you going to eat, Niall?”
Niall just keeps smiling at him in that very unnerving way he has when he’s completely focused on the task at hand and determined to keep it that way.
“Ah I’ll grab something in a bit,” he says eventually, waving a hand like it’s nothing, like it’s totally normal for him to have handed someone else a plate full of food, and the sharp, collective intake of breath in the room is audible. Louis drops the cup he’d been holding and Liam is the only one to look over - not even Louis himself is paying the slightest bit of attention to where water is seeping sluggishly into his trousers in a very unfortunate pattern indeed.
“Oh … okay. Thanks? If you’re sure?” Liam says to Niall, still not daring to look directly down at the plate and bristling when Niall stands up suddenly, but when he leans in over Liam it’s only to ask if he needs anything else - a drink or a napkin or something from the dinner table that he didn’t think to fetch Liam already, and when Liam finally looks down at the plate he sees that Niall has loaded it with all of his favorites; every detail right down to picking the green peppers out of his pasta salad and grabbing the spicy chicken bites with the crispiest edges evidently catered to.
“No, this is … that’s exactly what I wanted. Thanks Niall,” Liam says, curling his fingers tight around the fork so he doesn’t do something silly like reach out to touch Niall’s hand instead.
“No problem, mate,” Niall grins before loping off across the room and right into the thick of the gradually returning chaos to gleefully point out that it looks like Louis has weed himself.
Liam stares somewhat dazedly down at his plate as he eats, and in his distraction misses the contemplative look that three of his four bandmates are giving him now.
----
It’s no secret that Liam is “the sensible one” in the band. He’s always the one who knows exactly what’s going on and what’s happened and where they have to be and when and why.
These days he’s much quicker to let go of the reins and let the small army that’s been assembled around them do what they’ve been hired to do and look after the scheduling side of things. Now as often as not it’s him that Paul’s got to hustle along, Liam that he’s got to work hard to wrangle.
But Liam is still Liam, and when Paul has to pull him away it’s from Louis - who is sitting in Liam’s lap in need of Liam to distract him from how how much he misses his girlfriend - or from Harry, who has tugged Liam down into his bunk on the tour bus and is asleep, lying half on Liam’s chest because he’s calm next to Liam, quiet and pliant in a way that he doesn’t seem to want to be with anyone else.
They’re so much busier these days, so many people need and want their time and attention, and there are only so many hours in the day.
So Liam gives up on needing to know exactly what they’re doing and where they’re going and why, and focuses on how everyone is and how they might need him instead.
----
It’s hard not to feel like he’s made a mistake when he breaks his toe, which is silly and he knows it, but Liam doesn’t ever like to know that he hasn’t done his best, and anything that means it’s him that requires care and attention feels like far from his best and nothing that he should ever have to find himself guilty of.
It was an accident, hardly a disaster.
But it’s a distraction, and one that means he can’t focus every ounce of his energy on being what his band need him to be.
Anything short of everything is too little, as far as Liam is concerned.
----
The pain comes on at the most random and unpredictable of times.
He can make it through a whole show barely noticing a thing, barely limping at all, but then he’ll wake up in the middle of the night with an ache shooting from his foot all the way up along his spine, wired sharp through his chest and pooling hot and painful in his collarbones, making his heart pound and his head swim.
He never knows when it’s going to hurt, and it’s hard to mask a pain that comes in quick shocks, taking him and whoever he’s trying to hide it from by complete surprise, faster than he can cover up.
----
Liam is sitting with Louis one morning, the two of them hidden away in the corner of a McDonalds three cities away from where Liam had hurt himself when he has to bite down on his own fist instead of tucking into the decidedly unhealthy breakfast that they’re treating themselves to that day.
Liam always wakes up first, and sometimes he’ll have a text waiting from Harry, who hasn’t gone to sleep yet, but this morning it had been Louis who had sent him an “are you awake” message and knocked on Liam’s hotel room door five seconds after his reply, clearly waiting just outside for it.
Louis already had Paul in tow and a list of his demands in mind, and Liam liked to indulge them all when he could, so they’d headed out and avoided attention by way of a very very early breakfast date.
They’ve just sat down, Louis sliding into the seat across from Liam and pulling Liam’s injured foot carefully up onto his knee with a fond smile and a gentle pat to Liam’s ankle, when pain slices through him, quick and awful but stopping just as suddenly as it had started. Not quick enough that he doesn’t react, though, and Louis goes rigid in his seat.
“Fuck did … did I hurt you? Was that me? Are you alright?”
He’s looking at Liam with wide, terrified eyes and Liam’s stomach sinks.
“No, no, it was nothing, I’m fine, it wasn’t you,” he says quickly, trying not to snap because he’s not angry with Louis, but his temper stays short when Louis stays still and makes no move to pick up his food or look away from Liam with that worried expression that Liam is getting very quickly sick of.
“Honestly, Louis, I’m fine. Eat your breakfast,” he says, and he’s grateful for the carefully encouraging elbow Paul gives Louis, rolling his eyes and smiling at Liam when Louis finally deems it safe for him to look away and eat.
On their way back to the hotel Louis stays close enough by Liam’s side that their shoulders brush as they walk, and Liam knows that Louis is offering him very literal support without saying as much.
Liam really appreciates the tact that Louis can dredge up when he needs to.
He knocks his shoulder a little harder into Louis’, and doesn’t complain when Louis follows him into the elevator with a hand touched gently to the small of Liam’s back.
----
Louis babies Liam by giving him his space.
For two whole days after that, he actually respects Liam’s boundaries.
He flings himself all over the other three even more than usual, which Liam is thankful for because he hates the rare occasions on which Louis finally registers that he’s overstepped the mark, and withdraws. Liam can’t stand how on those days, infrequent as they are, Louis looks so small - hunched in on himself in more ways than just the obvious.
Now he’s as all over the others as ever, but he finds new ways to smother Liam.
Instead of splaying his legs up over Liam’s knees when they sit in interviews, or demanding piggyback rides from the car to backstage, Louis touches Liam often and carefully in very small, deliberate ways. Instead of letting (or being the cause of) one of the others fall bodily into Liam in the midst of their antics, Louis steers them out of Liam’s space and dips briefly into it himself instead, with a hand on Liam’s arm or thigh feeling like something of an apology and something else entirely too.
Louis is careful with Liam, considerate of him in ways that he never is, and in ways that Liam finds he really doesn’t want anymore after only two days of them.
Although it was a nice gesture - one that Liam appreciates and maybe one that he really needed - he has no qualms about reaching out for Louis and pulling him closer, getting him back.
Louis comes easily and with shy smiles and Liam knows that giving him his space wasn’t an effort that came without cost to Louis.
Liam didn’t know that he needed space, but Louis knew to give it to him. And now he knows to take it back, and spread it out around the five of them where it belongs.
----
Harry chooses bravado. Sure, shining confidence that doesn’t come half as naturally to him as he’d like you to think.
When Liam is asked about his foot in interviews, Harry creates distractions and deflects attention as easily as he breathes, taking everything that’s offered all for himself. People are powerless to look away from his slow, sly grins and the way he pins anyone he turns his gaze on with the kind of attention that you really can’t walk away from unless you have it on offer twenty four hours a day the way Liam and the rest of them do.
Harry is something special, better at this game than any of them are and only set to get better and better at it as he learns how to accept and reject the affections offered up to him on a plate everywhere he goes.
Liam worried about Harry a lot, in the early days. He lay awake at night plagued by thoughts of Harry taken in and kept by all of it, returned to them wasted and drained of everything that makes him him because everyone wants a little piece of it, some small part of something that Liam was terrified Harry wouldn’t know he needed to keep.
Harry doesn’t see it that way, and Liam doesn’t know if he does anymore either.
Harry gives everyone something like what they think they want, and is no lesser for it himself. He doesn’t play the game, exactly, and Liam is thankful for that when it means that they can’t lose.
Harry shows those who look for it a reflection of what they’re looking to find. He draws attention from everywhere in the room and then turns it on a single source, giving to them what others will so readily try to give to him. Harry doesn’t want it, but he can return it in ways that are beyond the rest of them, so he’s happy to do what needs to be done for all of them.
Harry steps in and makes it seem like that’s what the interviewer has been waiting for all along.
When Liam is asked about his foot he reels off whatever version of events he finds easiest to tie himself to today, and then ducks his head and pastes on a smile that throbs across his face in an echo of the faint ache that pulses through his foot as if he needs the regular reminder. Harry takes that as the cue it is, coaxing attention his way and showing whoever is asking questions that what they really want to know is whatever it is that Harry wants to tell them.
Harry takes the heat off Liam in ways that he’s done for all of them in the past, and will continue to do whenever it’s necessary.
It’s different now when it’s the same subject, over and over again and brand new news that everyone wants to ask about. Harry must be about as sick of directing the focus of interviews as Liam is of doing them these days, but every single time Liam turns to him with apologetic smiles or starts to try and think of a way to say ‘thank you,’ Harry stops him. He looks at Liam without smiling, without laughing, and all the more soft and open for that, and says,
“Don’t you dare. We do what we can, right? You for us, and just this once - us for you. Let us, yeah?”
Harry is honest and adamant in ways that still scare Liam a bit sometimes, but for different reasons entirely now.
Harry says what he means and he means everything he says to Liam, to them. Liam listens, but he doesn’t have to hear what Harry’s said to believe him. He sees it on Harry’s face, in Harry’s eyes when he looks at Liam, and he knows - he knows it’s true.
More than that, some days.
“Yeah, okay,” Liam says, and it is.
----
Harry isn’t always serious, although he is constantly relentless. Sometimes that extends to his focus in interviews, but sometimes it extends to more interesting things entirely.
Like now, when it means that he’s decided he wants to kiss Liam’s toe better, and won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
Liam laughs at him, rolls his eyes at him, huffs in exasperation and tries in vain to keep Harry’s hands off him in turn. Each and every endeavor is as unsuccessful as he knew it would be, and ten minutes later Liam steps out of the shower and into some sweatpants and socks and is being half-heartedly held down on the sofa by Louis and Niall and Zayn as Harry strips him of one sock, and rolls the leg of Liam’s sweats up to just under his knee because Harry insists upon a “clear work space.”
Liam stops struggling somewhere around the point when Harry’s fingers slip up along his calf, although he’s quite sure that that’s exactly when he should have really started to struggle instead.
Harry goes to his knees next to the sofa and when he cradles Liam’s heel in the palm of his hand Liam’s shiver is only half in response to the brush of Harry’s thumb up under the sensitive arch of his foot. Harry smirks at him, and Louis giggles, and Niall raises his eyebrows in interest. Zayn’s knowing look is probably what Liam appreciates least about all of this.
Harry presses his mouth very gently against Liam’s broken toe, and then slightly less gently against each of Liam’s other toes. He holds Liam’s foot high enough that he can duck in closer, running the tip of his nose up into the arch and dragging his mouth after, his lips catching against Liam’s heel. It tickles, and it feels strange, and Liam can deal with that.
But then Harry presses a line of wet, messy kisses up to Liam’s ankle, and Liam sees as much as he feels the flash of tongue that dips around the bone there, and,
“That’s quite enough of that,” he says, clearing his throat and trying to look sternly at Harry, hoping against hope that it’ll work.
It doesn’t.
Harry just tilts his head to one side, casts a very deliberate look up along the length of Liam’s body and says, “is it really?” waiting until Liam’s let his frown settle slightly deeper before he shrugs easily and gets to his feet, trailing his fingers down over Liam’s foot as he goes.
Harry is nothing if not an opportunist, and Liam only has himself to blame for foolishly thinking that his injury would even temporarily mean otherwise.
Liam pulls his sock back on and settles in between Harry and Zayn on the couch, and the five of them watch tv there in Louis’ room until Niall falls asleep on Zayn’s shoulder. Harry doesn't push his luck, but he keeps one arm wrapped around Liam's waist, and shifts right over into the hold, his curls a soft, unruly mass across Liam's shoulder and Harry's mouth brushing against the bare skin of his arm from time to time. It's a lot, but not quite too much. Zayn's hand tucked between Liam's knees makes it feel almost like enough.
When they all make a move to leave - Zayn standing up to stretch and temporarily distracting Liam with the slice of skin and hipbone he reveals between his shirt and his jeans - Louis wraps a hand around Liam’s good ankle, the one that’s balanced up across his other knee. Louis’ touch is sure and strong, and he holds Liam’s ankle in a grip that feels like it could bruise, if held a bit longer, but Louis lets go too soon. The look that he gives Liam then takes almost as long as the phantom heat of his fingers on Liam’s skin to fade, and Liam is still thinking about it when Zayn takes him by the hand and leads Liam away to his room.
“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” Zayn asks when he’s got Liam stripped to his boxers and pressed down into his sheets.
Liam answers that he is, and knows that they’re talking about two different things, but he thinks that hardly matters when it all ends the same way.
----
Zayn doesn’t do a single thing differently when Liam is hurt.
He is no more careful now than he’s been since he stopped needing to be careful at all.
With Zayn’s fingers tight around his bicep or tucked into the pocket of his jeans - with Zayn wrapping an arm around his waist or tucking an ankle between Liam’s at lunch - in Zayn’s bed, with Zayn’s hands and mouth and teeth and tongue as rough and sure as ever - Liam can know nothing has changed.
----
Things are thrown slightly off kilter by his injury, and Liam copes as best he can. He lets them take care of him as much as he knows how to, and he tries not to be surprised by how that doesn’t change the promise of change at all.
----
So Liam hobbles a lot, and hops when he has to. Paul carries him sometimes, right after shows when he’s too hyper to think about balancing his weight properly or first thing in the morning when he’s cranky and cross with himself for getting hurt in the first place - tempted to try and walk on it even though he knows he shouldn’t, just because he thinks he should be able to.
And even when it doesn’t hurt, when he’s forgotten about the crutches somewhere close to hand and the eyes trained on his every move - the boys are there to remind him in ways that don’t make him immediately think of pain or injury or mistakes. With hands quick and careful to support him at times and quicker to be anything but careful of him at others, attention there should he need it but not so much that he feels any more scrutinized than normal, he has no more or no less than everything he needs.
And that’s nothing new, not nearly.
It might change. Eventually. But that will only be to make it more.
_______
_______
Liam/Zayn, pre-OT5 h/c fic for harriet_vane, a hundred years after it was promised.
pg-13, 4,502 words, untrue.
Liam is more embarrassed about breaking his toe than anything else. It’s neither the kind of injury you can really boast about nor one that you can ignore. It happens the day of their first gig in America, and that’s rotten luck, but it doesn’t really change anything. He’s adamant that it won’t keep him from performing, and it doesn’t, but it bloody hurts.
The others all try to come with him to the emergency room and Liam gets close to having to close Zayn’s fingers in the door of the van to keep him from climbing in after him. Liam gets it. It’s kind of uncomfortably familiar. None of them have gotten hurt since Louis got stung by that sea urchin at judge’s houses, and it’s not as though they’ve spent every single waking moment together since, but Liam figures from everyone’s reaction that he’s not the only one who would really rather that any time they spend apart is by choice and done in full health.
Liam spends two hours waiting to be x-rayed, getting x-rayed, and waiting for someone to read his x-rays and give him a verdict. The boys are supposed to be doing final run-throughs of stage positioning now that they’ve finally sorted the band set up, but Liam barely has time to finish replying to one text before his phone is vibrating with another. It makes the hours fly by.
He calls Louis to tell them that he’s fine, he’s just broken one toe and it won’t mean he can’t dance. He doesn’t even realize he’s on speakerphone until Niall yells something in the background about how he couldn’t dance to begin with. Just before he hangs up they all shout various versions of ‘goodbye’ at him, and he can’t tell what any of them actually say, but the sound of their voices makes him feel better anyway.
He’s given a set of crutches to use if he needs to, though the doctors say he shouldn’t and that’s a challenge that Liam readily accepts. He hobbles out to the van, batting away would-be helping hands and glaring at anyone foolish enough to start to argue.
Now that he can’t tell himself that it’s nothing, it’s not so easy to ignore the pain and the flare of embarrassment that burns across his face when he thinks about the fact that he accidentally broke one of his own bones. He sits in silence on the way back, and graciously allows himself fifteen minutes to wallow and berate himself before he turns his focus toward pretending that it never happened. His band don’t need him injured or moping, so Liam decides that he will be neither.
It quickly becomes an afterthought at most.
Once he can say he’s had it checked out he waves off offers of rest, pockets his painkillers with absolutely no intention of taking any for any reason and heads straight back to the arena to pick up where he left off.
----
At first no-one says anything about it.
Liam catches Louis frowning at the crutches when Paul sets them against a door in the dressing room, and his first near stumble finds him instantly surrounded - all four of them there in an instant; Niall and Harry's hands on each of his shoulders, Zayn's at his waist and Louis' fingers clenched hard around his elbow.
It's just that first shock of forgetting that some things send pain shooting up through his foot, though, and it's a lesson he learns quickly. He huffs something nearly like a laugh and shakes his head and gently shoves them each away, only letting his hands linger over Zayn's for a split second before he's counting them down again and getting it right this time.
For the rest of the afternoon they give Liam his space by staying by his side exactly like normal but not talking about it.
It's as if they know that when it's acknowledged Liam remembers to feel guilty, remembers to be royally ticked off at himself for being so clumsy in the first place. They've each gotten pretty good at knowing what they need, collectively and personally, and the only slip up he can pin on them today is the way they watch him so closely, looking for some sign of discomfort or a desire to talk about it, maybe. But there's nothing to talk about, and Liam isn't going to let them see that he's hurt when there's nothing any of them can do about it.
It's hardly major, and it's all his own fault. There's nothing for it but to get on.
----
The show goes fine, absolutely to schedule besides a couple of points where Liam has to sit on the edge of the couch or find excuses flimsy at best to stride up to one of the others and sling an arm around their shoulders, letting them take some of his weight for a second.
Luckily they've never actually needed any excuse at all to help themselves to one another's space, and they each react in exactly the same way - by instantly wrapping their arm around his waist and pulling him in, trying to help as much as he'll let them.
That's not really very much, but it's more than enough to get him through it.
----
The next few days are more of the same, shows and interviews and appearances and signings here and there.
After the show in Fairfax Liam sits in the car on the way back to the hotel and thinks very seriously about actually taking the painkillers he's been prescribed for all of six seconds before Harry sits forward from the seat behind and hugs his head for no apparent reason. The ensuing scuffle is sufficient distraction from the pain flaring hot up across the entire length of his leg, it feels like, and before they check out the next morning Liam leaves the little vial of tablets hidden away at the back of a drawer in his room, hurriedly slamming it shut when Zayn appears to accompany him downstairs.
Anyone else would get a lecture for treating him like an invalid, but Zayn has always been able to get away with a little bit more than Liam would afford anyone else, and he knows it. He’s not shy about it, either.
----
After their show in Rutherford, Liam thinks of the tablets tucked away inside a desk in another city with regretful fondness, and then takes matters into ... well, someone else's hands, really. He temporarily and crestfallenly admits defeat and lets Paul carry him from the dressing room out to the car after the show.
And that's when it starts.
Because the other four are like sharks who've caught the scent of blood in the water now that Liam has admitted weakness of some sort or indicated that he’s susceptible to care, as they seem to see it.
He's awoken the sleeping giant that is his band's apparent desire to baby him as best they each know how.
----
For Niall that comes down to food. As most things do.
The general mayhem that routinely tempers their pre-show process all but comes to a complete standstill when Niall fixes a plate of food and carries it over to where Liam is sitting with his foot propped up.
Every pair of eyes in the room is on them when Niall sets the plate balancing across Liam’s knee and hands him a fork, smiling. Liam accepts the fork because he hasn’t got much choice when Niall is pressing it into his hand, but he doesn’t even look at the food. He very carefully maintains eye contact with Niall instead when he says,
“... aren’t you going to eat, Niall?”
Niall just keeps smiling at him in that very unnerving way he has when he’s completely focused on the task at hand and determined to keep it that way.
“Ah I’ll grab something in a bit,” he says eventually, waving a hand like it’s nothing, like it’s totally normal for him to have handed someone else a plate full of food, and the sharp, collective intake of breath in the room is audible. Louis drops the cup he’d been holding and Liam is the only one to look over - not even Louis himself is paying the slightest bit of attention to where water is seeping sluggishly into his trousers in a very unfortunate pattern indeed.
“Oh … okay. Thanks? If you’re sure?” Liam says to Niall, still not daring to look directly down at the plate and bristling when Niall stands up suddenly, but when he leans in over Liam it’s only to ask if he needs anything else - a drink or a napkin or something from the dinner table that he didn’t think to fetch Liam already, and when Liam finally looks down at the plate he sees that Niall has loaded it with all of his favorites; every detail right down to picking the green peppers out of his pasta salad and grabbing the spicy chicken bites with the crispiest edges evidently catered to.
“No, this is … that’s exactly what I wanted. Thanks Niall,” Liam says, curling his fingers tight around the fork so he doesn’t do something silly like reach out to touch Niall’s hand instead.
“No problem, mate,” Niall grins before loping off across the room and right into the thick of the gradually returning chaos to gleefully point out that it looks like Louis has weed himself.
Liam stares somewhat dazedly down at his plate as he eats, and in his distraction misses the contemplative look that three of his four bandmates are giving him now.
----
It’s no secret that Liam is “the sensible one” in the band. He’s always the one who knows exactly what’s going on and what’s happened and where they have to be and when and why.
These days he’s much quicker to let go of the reins and let the small army that’s been assembled around them do what they’ve been hired to do and look after the scheduling side of things. Now as often as not it’s him that Paul’s got to hustle along, Liam that he’s got to work hard to wrangle.
But Liam is still Liam, and when Paul has to pull him away it’s from Louis - who is sitting in Liam’s lap in need of Liam to distract him from how how much he misses his girlfriend - or from Harry, who has tugged Liam down into his bunk on the tour bus and is asleep, lying half on Liam’s chest because he’s calm next to Liam, quiet and pliant in a way that he doesn’t seem to want to be with anyone else.
They’re so much busier these days, so many people need and want their time and attention, and there are only so many hours in the day.
So Liam gives up on needing to know exactly what they’re doing and where they’re going and why, and focuses on how everyone is and how they might need him instead.
----
It’s hard not to feel like he’s made a mistake when he breaks his toe, which is silly and he knows it, but Liam doesn’t ever like to know that he hasn’t done his best, and anything that means it’s him that requires care and attention feels like far from his best and nothing that he should ever have to find himself guilty of.
It was an accident, hardly a disaster.
But it’s a distraction, and one that means he can’t focus every ounce of his energy on being what his band need him to be.
Anything short of everything is too little, as far as Liam is concerned.
----
The pain comes on at the most random and unpredictable of times.
He can make it through a whole show barely noticing a thing, barely limping at all, but then he’ll wake up in the middle of the night with an ache shooting from his foot all the way up along his spine, wired sharp through his chest and pooling hot and painful in his collarbones, making his heart pound and his head swim.
He never knows when it’s going to hurt, and it’s hard to mask a pain that comes in quick shocks, taking him and whoever he’s trying to hide it from by complete surprise, faster than he can cover up.
----
Liam is sitting with Louis one morning, the two of them hidden away in the corner of a McDonalds three cities away from where Liam had hurt himself when he has to bite down on his own fist instead of tucking into the decidedly unhealthy breakfast that they’re treating themselves to that day.
Liam always wakes up first, and sometimes he’ll have a text waiting from Harry, who hasn’t gone to sleep yet, but this morning it had been Louis who had sent him an “are you awake” message and knocked on Liam’s hotel room door five seconds after his reply, clearly waiting just outside for it.
Louis already had Paul in tow and a list of his demands in mind, and Liam liked to indulge them all when he could, so they’d headed out and avoided attention by way of a very very early breakfast date.
They’ve just sat down, Louis sliding into the seat across from Liam and pulling Liam’s injured foot carefully up onto his knee with a fond smile and a gentle pat to Liam’s ankle, when pain slices through him, quick and awful but stopping just as suddenly as it had started. Not quick enough that he doesn’t react, though, and Louis goes rigid in his seat.
“Fuck did … did I hurt you? Was that me? Are you alright?”
He’s looking at Liam with wide, terrified eyes and Liam’s stomach sinks.
“No, no, it was nothing, I’m fine, it wasn’t you,” he says quickly, trying not to snap because he’s not angry with Louis, but his temper stays short when Louis stays still and makes no move to pick up his food or look away from Liam with that worried expression that Liam is getting very quickly sick of.
“Honestly, Louis, I’m fine. Eat your breakfast,” he says, and he’s grateful for the carefully encouraging elbow Paul gives Louis, rolling his eyes and smiling at Liam when Louis finally deems it safe for him to look away and eat.
On their way back to the hotel Louis stays close enough by Liam’s side that their shoulders brush as they walk, and Liam knows that Louis is offering him very literal support without saying as much.
Liam really appreciates the tact that Louis can dredge up when he needs to.
He knocks his shoulder a little harder into Louis’, and doesn’t complain when Louis follows him into the elevator with a hand touched gently to the small of Liam’s back.
----
Louis babies Liam by giving him his space.
For two whole days after that, he actually respects Liam’s boundaries.
He flings himself all over the other three even more than usual, which Liam is thankful for because he hates the rare occasions on which Louis finally registers that he’s overstepped the mark, and withdraws. Liam can’t stand how on those days, infrequent as they are, Louis looks so small - hunched in on himself in more ways than just the obvious.
Now he’s as all over the others as ever, but he finds new ways to smother Liam.
Instead of splaying his legs up over Liam’s knees when they sit in interviews, or demanding piggyback rides from the car to backstage, Louis touches Liam often and carefully in very small, deliberate ways. Instead of letting (or being the cause of) one of the others fall bodily into Liam in the midst of their antics, Louis steers them out of Liam’s space and dips briefly into it himself instead, with a hand on Liam’s arm or thigh feeling like something of an apology and something else entirely too.
Louis is careful with Liam, considerate of him in ways that he never is, and in ways that Liam finds he really doesn’t want anymore after only two days of them.
Although it was a nice gesture - one that Liam appreciates and maybe one that he really needed - he has no qualms about reaching out for Louis and pulling him closer, getting him back.
Louis comes easily and with shy smiles and Liam knows that giving him his space wasn’t an effort that came without cost to Louis.
Liam didn’t know that he needed space, but Louis knew to give it to him. And now he knows to take it back, and spread it out around the five of them where it belongs.
----
Harry chooses bravado. Sure, shining confidence that doesn’t come half as naturally to him as he’d like you to think.
When Liam is asked about his foot in interviews, Harry creates distractions and deflects attention as easily as he breathes, taking everything that’s offered all for himself. People are powerless to look away from his slow, sly grins and the way he pins anyone he turns his gaze on with the kind of attention that you really can’t walk away from unless you have it on offer twenty four hours a day the way Liam and the rest of them do.
Harry is something special, better at this game than any of them are and only set to get better and better at it as he learns how to accept and reject the affections offered up to him on a plate everywhere he goes.
Liam worried about Harry a lot, in the early days. He lay awake at night plagued by thoughts of Harry taken in and kept by all of it, returned to them wasted and drained of everything that makes him him because everyone wants a little piece of it, some small part of something that Liam was terrified Harry wouldn’t know he needed to keep.
Harry doesn’t see it that way, and Liam doesn’t know if he does anymore either.
Harry gives everyone something like what they think they want, and is no lesser for it himself. He doesn’t play the game, exactly, and Liam is thankful for that when it means that they can’t lose.
Harry shows those who look for it a reflection of what they’re looking to find. He draws attention from everywhere in the room and then turns it on a single source, giving to them what others will so readily try to give to him. Harry doesn’t want it, but he can return it in ways that are beyond the rest of them, so he’s happy to do what needs to be done for all of them.
Harry steps in and makes it seem like that’s what the interviewer has been waiting for all along.
When Liam is asked about his foot he reels off whatever version of events he finds easiest to tie himself to today, and then ducks his head and pastes on a smile that throbs across his face in an echo of the faint ache that pulses through his foot as if he needs the regular reminder. Harry takes that as the cue it is, coaxing attention his way and showing whoever is asking questions that what they really want to know is whatever it is that Harry wants to tell them.
Harry takes the heat off Liam in ways that he’s done for all of them in the past, and will continue to do whenever it’s necessary.
It’s different now when it’s the same subject, over and over again and brand new news that everyone wants to ask about. Harry must be about as sick of directing the focus of interviews as Liam is of doing them these days, but every single time Liam turns to him with apologetic smiles or starts to try and think of a way to say ‘thank you,’ Harry stops him. He looks at Liam without smiling, without laughing, and all the more soft and open for that, and says,
“Don’t you dare. We do what we can, right? You for us, and just this once - us for you. Let us, yeah?”
Harry is honest and adamant in ways that still scare Liam a bit sometimes, but for different reasons entirely now.
Harry says what he means and he means everything he says to Liam, to them. Liam listens, but he doesn’t have to hear what Harry’s said to believe him. He sees it on Harry’s face, in Harry’s eyes when he looks at Liam, and he knows - he knows it’s true.
More than that, some days.
“Yeah, okay,” Liam says, and it is.
----
Harry isn’t always serious, although he is constantly relentless. Sometimes that extends to his focus in interviews, but sometimes it extends to more interesting things entirely.
Like now, when it means that he’s decided he wants to kiss Liam’s toe better, and won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
Liam laughs at him, rolls his eyes at him, huffs in exasperation and tries in vain to keep Harry’s hands off him in turn. Each and every endeavor is as unsuccessful as he knew it would be, and ten minutes later Liam steps out of the shower and into some sweatpants and socks and is being half-heartedly held down on the sofa by Louis and Niall and Zayn as Harry strips him of one sock, and rolls the leg of Liam’s sweats up to just under his knee because Harry insists upon a “clear work space.”
Liam stops struggling somewhere around the point when Harry’s fingers slip up along his calf, although he’s quite sure that that’s exactly when he should have really started to struggle instead.
Harry goes to his knees next to the sofa and when he cradles Liam’s heel in the palm of his hand Liam’s shiver is only half in response to the brush of Harry’s thumb up under the sensitive arch of his foot. Harry smirks at him, and Louis giggles, and Niall raises his eyebrows in interest. Zayn’s knowing look is probably what Liam appreciates least about all of this.
Harry presses his mouth very gently against Liam’s broken toe, and then slightly less gently against each of Liam’s other toes. He holds Liam’s foot high enough that he can duck in closer, running the tip of his nose up into the arch and dragging his mouth after, his lips catching against Liam’s heel. It tickles, and it feels strange, and Liam can deal with that.
But then Harry presses a line of wet, messy kisses up to Liam’s ankle, and Liam sees as much as he feels the flash of tongue that dips around the bone there, and,
“That’s quite enough of that,” he says, clearing his throat and trying to look sternly at Harry, hoping against hope that it’ll work.
It doesn’t.
Harry just tilts his head to one side, casts a very deliberate look up along the length of Liam’s body and says, “is it really?” waiting until Liam’s let his frown settle slightly deeper before he shrugs easily and gets to his feet, trailing his fingers down over Liam’s foot as he goes.
Harry is nothing if not an opportunist, and Liam only has himself to blame for foolishly thinking that his injury would even temporarily mean otherwise.
Liam pulls his sock back on and settles in between Harry and Zayn on the couch, and the five of them watch tv there in Louis’ room until Niall falls asleep on Zayn’s shoulder. Harry doesn't push his luck, but he keeps one arm wrapped around Liam's waist, and shifts right over into the hold, his curls a soft, unruly mass across Liam's shoulder and Harry's mouth brushing against the bare skin of his arm from time to time. It's a lot, but not quite too much. Zayn's hand tucked between Liam's knees makes it feel almost like enough.
When they all make a move to leave - Zayn standing up to stretch and temporarily distracting Liam with the slice of skin and hipbone he reveals between his shirt and his jeans - Louis wraps a hand around Liam’s good ankle, the one that’s balanced up across his other knee. Louis’ touch is sure and strong, and he holds Liam’s ankle in a grip that feels like it could bruise, if held a bit longer, but Louis lets go too soon. The look that he gives Liam then takes almost as long as the phantom heat of his fingers on Liam’s skin to fade, and Liam is still thinking about it when Zayn takes him by the hand and leads Liam away to his room.
“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” Zayn asks when he’s got Liam stripped to his boxers and pressed down into his sheets.
Liam answers that he is, and knows that they’re talking about two different things, but he thinks that hardly matters when it all ends the same way.
----
Zayn doesn’t do a single thing differently when Liam is hurt.
He is no more careful now than he’s been since he stopped needing to be careful at all.
With Zayn’s fingers tight around his bicep or tucked into the pocket of his jeans - with Zayn wrapping an arm around his waist or tucking an ankle between Liam’s at lunch - in Zayn’s bed, with Zayn’s hands and mouth and teeth and tongue as rough and sure as ever - Liam can know nothing has changed.
----
Things are thrown slightly off kilter by his injury, and Liam copes as best he can. He lets them take care of him as much as he knows how to, and he tries not to be surprised by how that doesn’t change the promise of change at all.
----
So Liam hobbles a lot, and hops when he has to. Paul carries him sometimes, right after shows when he’s too hyper to think about balancing his weight properly or first thing in the morning when he’s cranky and cross with himself for getting hurt in the first place - tempted to try and walk on it even though he knows he shouldn’t, just because he thinks he should be able to.
And even when it doesn’t hurt, when he’s forgotten about the crutches somewhere close to hand and the eyes trained on his every move - the boys are there to remind him in ways that don’t make him immediately think of pain or injury or mistakes. With hands quick and careful to support him at times and quicker to be anything but careful of him at others, attention there should he need it but not so much that he feels any more scrutinized than normal, he has no more or no less than everything he needs.
And that’s nothing new, not nearly.
It might change. Eventually. But that will only be to make it more.
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