fic: once for everybody who got left behind (1/2)
once for everybody who got left behind
r, 19,000 words
au where zayn is a ghost, and liam moves into his attic
warnings for major character death (just zayn, though, which sort of goes along with being a ghost) and mentioned past minor character death
also on ao3
February’s not been the best month for Liam. Not historically, and specifically not this one.
And really, he could’ve handled the whole out-of-a-job thing, honestly. Like, it was alright work, but it had never particularly been his dream to co-edit a mostly-nonsense, vaguely new-age lifestyle newsletter read mostly by aging hippies. But Dani had gotten him the job through one of her dance mates, a girl called Rain who did something she called “movement art” and was regularly barefoot in public, and who was Liam to complain? It was a job, and he got to write sometimes when he wasn’t correcting other people’s writing, and it paid actual money.
Still, he’d only been briefly surprised, and then not subsequently not surprised at all, when he’d turned up to work one day at the beginning of February to find the rest of the staff clearing out their things in boxes. “Oh,” his boss had said, carelessly yanking down a tapestry that hung behind his desk. “Hasn’t anyone told you?”
Something about tax, as it turned out. And specifically, the non-payment of it. For like, almost a decade.
Which is almost impressively negligent, in Liam’s opinion.
So he’d shoved his small collection of personal belongings, plus a few of the nicer pens, into his bag, and by the time his train was pulling back into the station near their flat, he’d mostly convinced himself that it was probably a good thing. New opportunities, and all.
He probably could’ve handled it.
And then three weeks later, Dani had been sitting at their kitchen table when he’d come home from the shops, which he’d immediately taken as a bad omen, as they’d never used their kitchen table once since they’d moved into the flat more than three years ago. Mostly they ate on the sofa. But Dani had been at the table, sitting with her back very straight, and her hands folded in front of her, and when she’d said they needed to talk, Liam had known it was over before she’d even started to speak.
Afterward, he’d offered to move out, because it seemed like the right thing to do, somehow. Dani’d protested, saying she’d go, but Liam found he couldn’t even think about the possibility of staying on there alone, not without her presence in the flat, so eventually she agreed, packed a small bag, told him she’d stay with her mum for a bit, and kissed him one last time on the cheek before closing the door softly behind her.
And that had been that.
Harry and Louis had been the only bit of good luck he’s had in ages, really. Their’s had been the first advert for a room he’d seen, or at least the first one he could afford, sort of, on the tiny bit of money he’d managed to save up before he’d been sacked. And the two of them hadn’t seemed like bad sorts at all when they met at a sandwich shop to talk, and really, that had been good enough for Liam. All in all, it takes less than a week between Dani finishing with him and Liam ending up in a taxi, his belongings in a few bags heaped around his feet.
So that’s how Liam turns up in front of the house -- a strange, sort of dilapidated little Victorian of a thing, squashed down into miniature and dropped in between two chip shops on a back street he’d never noticed before -- turning his new set of keys over in his hands, totally unable to recognize his life now from how it had been just a month ago.
-
It gets even stranger several minutes later when he opens the door to his new attic bedroom, and there’s an unfamiliar bloke sitting on one of the ledges under the dormered windows, gazing out over the front garden through a window.
“Oh,” Liam says. “Um, hello.”
The boy ignores him, though, so Liam shifts awkwardly, and then clears his throat. “Hello?” he tries again.
The boy looks up at that.
“Sorry, maybe I’ve made a mistake, I thought--” Liam stops, because the boy has turned away from him again. Liam looks at him for a moment. He seems about Liam’s age, twenty-something, and he’s got his black hair shoved off his face in a swoopy quiff, the sort Liam had never been able to pull off before he’d cut off all his hair. He’s a bit thin, sort of lanky, and Liam can see a tangle of dark tattoos curling up his forearm and disappearing into the rolled up cuff of his soft-looking plaid shirt. He doesn’t glance back at Liam.
“I’m meant to be moving into this room,” he says eventually, a bit too loud for the small attic, and the boy looks back at him, sighing heavily.
“Are you talking to me?” he asks.
“Yes?” Liam says. “Who else would I be talking to?”
The boy frowns at him, looking confused. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but then thinks better of it and closes it. Instead he shrugs, stands up from the window seat, and drifts over to the bed, where he flops down onto it, turns his back to Liam, and curls up into a ball.
“Um,” Liam says, taking a step backwards towards the door. The boy doesn’t respond, and Liam eventually reaches for the knob.
-
He figures he ought to find Harry and Louis, because possibly they’ll know why there’s a strange person in his room. Hopefully.
He finds them in the kitchen, and stops in the doorway, waiting for them to notice his presence.
“Liam!” Louis exclaims. “Hi!”
“Sorry, am I -- am I interrupting?” Liam asks, even though it’s obvious to him that he is, since Harry is sitting on one of the stools pulled up against the counter, and Louis is draped over his lap, getting in the way while Harry puts together a sandwich. Also, Harry’s not wearing a shirt. Also, Louis’ hand is shoved into one of the pockets of Harry’s trousers.
“‘Course not, mate, what’s up?” Louis says brightly. “Have you got all your stuff brought over, then? Room’s alright?” He pulls the sandwich away from Harry and starts eating, still sitting on top of Harry, who doesn’t look at all uncomfortable with the arrangement.
“No, yeah, everything’s good,” he says automatically, although it’s not, exactly. “Er, actually, it’s just -- when I went up there, you know.” He points up towards the attic, and blushes, because it probably doesn’t require clarification where he means. “There was someone already there? Another bloke? He looked, um. Comfortable?”
“Oh, that,” Louis says, waving a hand vaguely as he shoves half of the sandwich into his mouth. “That’s just Zayn.”
Oh, well, Liam thinks, it’s just Zayn. Louis says it so casually that it takes him a moment to realize that doesn’t actually clarify anything at all.
“I. Erm. Sorry, who’s Zayn?”
Louis says something, but whatever it is, Liam can’t translate it through all the food in Louis’ mouth. “I mean, it’s alright,” he says, because maybe he’s just misunderstood the situation. He’s got a history of doing that, it seems. “If it’s meant to be a shared room, or something, I just hadn’t realized--” And then he has another thought. “Or if you’ve already found someone, y’know, that’s fine. I can -- I can go.” He thinks of his three small bags, sitting in the front hall, that hold everything he’d taken with him from the old flat. It hadn’t been much at all -- too much of their things had been theirs, and Liam couldn’t manage to make himself bring anything along that had been part Dani’s, too, not even the towels from the bath, so mostly he’s got clothes, and a few pictures of his family. It won’t take long to move it again, if they’ve already given the attic to this Zayn bloke and forgotten to tell Liam. He feels suddenly exhausted just thinking about trying to sort out another place to stay, but at least -- at least he travels light.
“No, hang on,” Louis says, forcing himself to swallow his sandwich and only choking a little. Harry pats his back soothingly. “The room’s all yours, mate, don’t go.”
“Alright,” Liam says, nodding slowly. “I don’t understand, then?”
“‘S’haunted,” Harry supplies, smiling easily. “D’you want tea, though? Sorry, I didn’t ask.”
“Um. Yes, tea, thank you,” Liam answers, because manners are important. “And, erm. What? Haunted?” He sits carefully on one of the stools across from the two of them.
“Zayn’s a ghost,” Louis says, carrying on eating as he lets Harry up so he can move around the kitchen to put on the kettle.
“Ha,” Liam says, trying to laugh and nod as if he understands the joke. “Ha ha, that’s a good one, lads.” He slaps awkwardly at his thigh.
“Nah, ‘s’not a joke,” Harry says cheerfully, peering over his bare shoulder at Liam.
“I’m surprised you can see him,” Louis adds. He’s inhaled the rest of his sandwich, and now he’s flicking crumbs about with his finger, scattering them off the edge of his plate. Liam resists the urge to pick up the kitchen roll and start cleaning up after him. He’s only been here an hour, after all. And there are probably more important issues at hand.
“Yeah, usually people can’t. I don’t even see him all of the time,” says Harry. “Plus he’s right moody. Y’know how they can be.”
And again, Liam is nodding, even though, no, he definitely does not know.
Louis is nodding as well, though, as if this all makes perfect sense. “Haz and I are usually the only ones who see him much. Well, Niall too, but.” He shrugs. “But, like, my sister Lottie’s stayed here before, slept upstairs and all, and she can’t see him even when he’s right in front of her.”
“He had a proper sulk about that,” Harry agrees, and hands Liam his tea, plus a few biscuits. “D’you want anything else? Lou’s eaten, obviously, but I could make something else, if you like?”
“Tea’s good, thanks.” Liam busies himself taking a sip of it, just to take a moment and figure out what’s happening. He decides that most likely, they’re taking the piss. Like, 75%. That’s a thing people do, sometimes -- play pranks on their new housemates. Other less-likely explanations include Liam having some sort of minor stroke and hallucinating this whole thing as a side-effect. His new room actually having a ghost in it is at the very bottom of the list. Best to just play along for now, he thinks. He drinks his tea and tries to think, and not stare at how Louis is now licking a spare bit of icing from one of the biscuits off the side of Harry’s hand.
“We were thinking about going around to the pub later, if you’d like to come,” Louis says, once Harry’s hand is out of his mouth. “Our mate Niall works there. He’ll give us free pints, so long as the owner’s not around.”
It’s strange, because aside from the whole haunted room prank, Louis and Harry seem -- probably not quite normal, but nice. Liam’s only met them a few times now, once at the sandwich shop, and another when he’d come round to see the room and give them a cheque, but he thinks renting their attic won’t be bad -- might even be just the thing he needs. And getting a pint doesn’t sound bad. He can’t remember the last time he’s done that, actually, gone out for a drink with lads. So maybe he just needs to ignore the bit where they’re pretending his room is haunted. Maybe it’s whatsit -- friendly hazing, or initiation, or something.
“Alright,” he agrees. “I should start putting my things away first, though?”
“Right, yeah,” Harry says. “We can let you know when we’re about to go?”
“Okay,” Liam says, still feeling like he hasn’t quite got a handle on the situation. “Thanks for the tea.”
He heads for the front hall and gathers up his bags, and then trudges up the staircase. At the top there’s a landing and then a hall that branches off towards Louis’ and Harry’s room, the toilet, and another cozy room that Louis had called a study the first time Liam had been to the house, although all it had in it was a few guitars and a battered sofa. At the opposite end of the landing is the doorway towards the back stairs, the ones that twist down to a strange little nook behind the sitting room, and also up to the attic.
Probably whoever their mate is that they’d got to pretend to be a ghost has cleared out by now, he reasons as he climbs the stairs. He hadn’t seen anyone pass through the kitchen, but that’s up towards the front of the house on the ground level, so someone could easily have come down the back stairs and out through the back garden without Liam noticing.
Liam hopes that’s what’s happened, at least. He’s tired, and he just wants to put away his things and maybe have a rest. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with a surly bloke pretending to be a ghost.
At the top of the stairs he shifts his bags on his shoulder, takes a breath, and nudges open the door with his elbow, hoping the bloke is gone.
The bloke is not gone, in fact. He’s exactly where he’d been earlier, sprawled out across the bed, except now his shoes are off, and he’s got his sock feet crossed on top of the duvet. Liam’s duvet, now, technically. He’s got his feet all over Liam’s duvet.
“Oh,” he says when he sees Liam come in. “You’re back.”
“You’re still here,” Liam says.
Zayn -- although Liam hasn’t any idea if that’s actually his name or not, or just part of the prank -- scowls at him. “‘Course I am. This is where I stay.”
“No,” Liam says, losing patience. He lets his bags drop at the foot of the bed and sighs heavily. “Look, alright, whatever the prank is, I’m sure it’s very funny, but I’m tired, I’ve had a long bloody day, and I just want to put my shit away and sleep for a bit, so. Could you just clear off?”
Zayn looks affronted. “Why should I clear off? This is my room.”
“Really?” Liam snaps, feeling his annoyance build. “D’you rent it, then? Because I’ve just paid about all the money I’ve got in the world to stay here, in what I was told was a vacant room, and I’m trying to be a good sport and play along, but this is really, definitely, not your room.”
“Lou and Haz’ll tell you,” Zayn says simply, crossing his arms across his chest.
“Oh, yeah, they told me,” Liam says, rolling his eyes. “They told me that you’re a ghost.”
Zayn’s face hardens a little, but he doesn’t move. “Well. There you go.”
“There what?” Liam thinks he might be losing his mind, a bit. The exhaustion of the last two weeks is setting in, and this isn’t funny anymore.
“That’s why I’m here, then.”
"That’s nonsense.” A small headache is blooming behind Liam’s eyes, and he rubs at it with the heel of his hand. “Ghosts don’t exist.”
“Sorry, what?” Zayn’s tone is brittle now, and his expression has gotten even more sour, if that’s possible.
“Ghosts. Do not. Exist,” Liam repeats, pausing for emphasis.
“You -- that’s not -- ugh,” Zayn splutters, looking furious, and a bit at a loss for words.
“Could you please just go now?” Liam asks. He knows he’s on the verge of begging, but all he wants to do is sleep.
“Fine,” Zayn spits. “Fine, alright, I’ll go.” He stands up from the bed, but -- Liam really must have a proper headache, or something else making his eyes go all wonky, because it doesn’t look right. Zayn moves strangely, too fluid, and the rickety bed doesn’t move at all even as he shifts his weight off it. “You’re a twat, you know that?”
Liam’s about to open his mouth to argue, to inform him that there’s absolutely nothing about this situation that makes him the twat, but all of a sudden he forgets what he wants to say, forgets how to say much at all, because in one instant, Zayn is scowling in front of him, and in the next he’s gone, disappearing quicker than Liam can blink, leaving only empty air and a slight electric crackling behind him.
-
Liam stands blinking at the empty space in front of him for several minutes. He thinks he may have forgotten how to move his limbs. He thinks he’s forgotten just about everything, really. There’s a slight hum in his ears, more the absence of sound than anything, and everything’s gone all slow and syrupy, like time has suspended.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there like that, but eventually there’s a thump from somewhere downstairs, and it snaps him out of the trance, breaks whatever spell had come over him. Sound comes rushing back, and he takes two jerky steps backward, his heart suddenly beating a drumbeat like it’s just remembered how.
Forcing himself to hold it together as best as he possibly can -- which is scarcely at all, but he thinks that ought to be allowed, given the circumstances -- he stumbles around the empty space where Zayn had been just a moment before, and almost breaks his neck careening down the stairs and towards the kitchen, where Harry and Louis are in pretty much the same position he’d left them just a few moments ago.
They both look up at him in a synchronized movement when he comes around the corner, and Harry makes a concerned little expression. Probably because Liam had only been gone for less than five minutes, and now he’s come racing back like a madman. If the way he feels is any indication of how he looks, he imagines he must look pale and on the verge of hysterics.
“You alright?” Harry asks.
“There was, um,” Liam starts. He doesn’t know how to start this sentence properly. “Zayn, and upstairs, and. Um.” He breathes heavily.
“Yeah?” Harry says.
“He disappeared,” Liam says. “Just, like. Into nothing.”
“Oh,” Louis says, sounding almost disappointed. “Did you say something to make him out of sorts?”
“I -- no, I mean.” Liam doesn’t know how to wrap his head around this, because the question shouldn’t be -- the question should be how is there a ghost in his room, not whether or not he’s done something to offend it. “Well, like. I might’ve told him that ghosts don’t exist?”
“Oh, no, he doesn’t like that,” Louis says.
“Oh,” Liam says. He’s trying to will his pulse to return to normal. “Okay. He doesn’t, uh. Like that. So, um. You weren’t joking, then?”
“Nope,” Harry says, looking sympathetic. “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? I guess we sort of forget, since we’re used to it and all.”
“I just assumed it was a prank,” Liam says weakly.
“I wish,” Louis says regretfully. “That’d be legendary. Trick someone into thinking their house’s haunted by making Zayn pop round and then disappear. Except I suppose it wouldn’t be a prank, then, as much as an actual haunting. Hm.” He scowls a little, like he’s trying to sort out the details necessary to using a ghost as the punchline in a practical joke.
“So -- he can just disappear when he feels like it?” Liam asks. He wants to -- he doesn’t know. Get his head around this, if that’s even possible. It must be, because Harry and Louis seem to have acclimatized themselves to it all, to the point where they can discuss it calmly, in the kitchen even.
“Mm, sort of,” Harry says. “It’s like -- I mean, we don’t really know the rules.”
“The ghost rules,” Louis says to himself, laughing a bit.
“He can disappear if he wants, but it doesn’t always work all the way. Sometimes his quiff hangs about, or he just goes a bit pale. But then, other times people can’t see him at all, even if he’d like them to.” Harry shrugs.
“Have you, um,” Liam starts. “Have you asked him about it? The, uh. Ghost rules?”
“Oh yeah, loads,” Harry says. “He doesn’t really know either. He always says it’s not like he knows any other ghosts to ask anyway.”
“Listen, is it a problem?” Louis asks. “Like, we understand, and honestly, we didn’t think you’d even be able to see him at all, or else we’d have told you, but--”
“Bit hard to bring that up beforehand without sounding insane, though,” Harry finishes for him. “Figured it wouldn’t be an issue. But, um. If it is? You can have your cheque back, it’s alright.”
Liam breathes once, and then twice. He flexes the fingers on his hand and shifts his weight from one foot to the other and back again. He thinks about his options.
Option one is to take his bags and go wander around London and hope he runs into someone who’ll offer him a room, available for tonight, with furniture to sleep on, for a rent that he can actually afford. He’s skeptical that he’s lucky enough -- especially lately -- for that to work out for him twice in a week.
Option two is to find a hotel room, but he really, really hasn’t got the money for that.
Option three is to phone Danielle and ask if he can come back, at least for a bit, and that doesn’t feel like an option at all.
Which leaves option four: stay.
“Alright,” he says. “I’ll, um. I’ll stay.” Harry and Louis seem to be doing well enough sharing a house with a ghost. There’s no reason Liam can’t do the same. “But he’s not, like. The bad sort of ghost, right?” He can scarcely believe he’s asking the question, having this conversation at all. But he’s never met a ghost before, and everything he’s heard always makes them out to be strange and scary, and on occasion, a bit evil.
“No! No, of course not,” Louis says, shaking his head meaningfully. “I promise, like. He’s just normal, pretty much. Sort of a twat sometimes, but he’s really a good lad. He’s -- is it weird to say he’s a good mate? Because he is, even if it is weird.”
“We like living with him,” Harry adds. “He’ll come around, y’know. If you two got off on the wrong foot.”
“And if he doesn’t he can mope about in the study until he does,” Louis says, shrugging.
“Right, okay,” says Liam. He’s going to roll with these punches, he decides. These very, very strange punches. “Listen, I think I won’t go to the pub with you tonight, if that’s alright. Sort of a strange day, you know?”
“‘Course, yeah,” Harry says. “Next time.”
Eventually the two of them leave the kitchen, Louis telling Harry as they go that he’s got to put a shirt on if they want to be let into the pub, because apparently that’s been an issue in the past -- Harry turning up half-naked, and being surprised when Niall wouldn’t let them through the door. Harry whines and drags his feet stompily up the stairs in protest, tripping gracelessly as he does, but when they shuffle out a half hour later, he’s got a jumper on and only a mildly sullen look on his face.
Liam stays in the kitchen for a long while, making several cups of tea and putting off going upstairs. He’s still trying to roll with the punches, but he thinks he can be forgiven for needing the space of more than an hour to get used to -- to all of this. Either way, he’s suddenly very aware of all the noises the now empty (or, like, mostly empty) house is making around him -- the refrigerator kicks on, setting a low hum thrumming beneath everything, and the stray creaks and bumps that are unquestionably nothing more than an old house settling make Liam jump every time.
He doesn’t go around the kitchen and sitting room turning on every single light he can find, but he certainly thinks about it.
-
He runs outs of patience with himself and finally decides to go back upstairs at half eleven.
Zayn’s not there when Liam cautiously pokes his head around the door. Unconsciously, he breathes a sigh of relief. He knows what Louis and Harry had said, and honestly, there hadn’t been anything unsettling or sinister about Zayn up until the point when he’d disappeared. But still. He’s a ghost, apparently, and Liam’s never believed in ghosts, as long as he can remember, and now there’s a good chance one will be lurking around the corner at any given point.
He hates that it makes his heart race nervously, but it does anyway.
Zayn doesn’t show up while Liam starts to put his clothes away in the wardrobe, or sets up a picture of his sisters and their parents on the table beside the bed. When Liam goes to change out of his clothes into joggers and a worn out t-shirt, he realizes it’s possible that Zayn might actually be there, just staying invisible, but -- and he has absolutely no idea what he’s basing this on -- the room just feels empty, so he thinks he must have gone somewhere else to be angry.
He still turns his back self-consciously away from the open room as he pulls his clothes off, though.
When he’s in bed and got the blankets pulled up around his chin, he hesitates for a moment before pulling the chain on the lamp on his bedside table, telling himself firmly not to be stupid.
It’s still a long while before he closes his eyes, though, staring up at the gabled ceiling in the dark, and even longer before he sleeps.
-
Harry and Louis are gone by the time Liam wakes up the next morning, shivering a bit from the chill of the attic. Louis teaches at a primary school, Liam remembers he’d said, and Harry does -- some course at uni, Liam forgets which one, in the morning before he goes to work at a posh little art gallery.
Liam stretches and feels his back pop. He hadn’t woken once in the night, which surprises him now, after the fact. Now that he’s awake he feels suddenly hyperaware, glancing around rapidly to see if he can spot Zayn anywhere, lurking in a corner or something. He can’t, as it turns out.
He stays in bed for a bit, watching a handful of tiny snowflakes drift past one of the windows. It looks bleak and gray outside, and freezing cold, and Liam’s briefly glad that he hasn’t got any reason to go outside today, until he remembers exactly why that is, and feels a familiar weight settle unhappily in his stomach. Right, he thinks. No Dani. No job.
He bites his lip unhappily, and pulls the thick duvet back up to his chin, flopping back down and rattling the metal bedframe as he does. He stares at the few bits of dust he can see swirling around in the dim light that’s filtering in, and before long his eyelids droop, and he drifts off to sleep again before he can help it.
-
When he finally slouches into the kitchen several hours later, Zayn is there, sitting on one of the chairs.
So not a dream, then, Liam is forced to admit.
Zayn’s gazing out a window again. He seems to do that quite a lot. And also, somehow, he appears to be smoking. Liam hadn’t known ghosts could smoke. Then again, he hadn’t known ghosts existed at all until yesterday, so maybe the gaps in his knowledge are understandable.
“Hi,” he says tentatively. He’s surprised to realize that his frustration -- and later, fear -- from the night before have mostly melted away, now that he’s looking at Zayn. He feels nervous, but also, distantly, a bit guilty -- like, if the attic’s really Zayn’s room, he supposes he can understand why he’s upset. He’s a bit relieved that Zayn’s not off being invisible and angry with Liam, actually.
Or, at least, he doesn’t think he is, but then he remembers what Harry had said last night, about how it doesn’t always work right, and Zayn sometimes stays visible even when he doesn’t want to. He’s looking different, now, less solid than he had the night before, almost like looking at something through a mist, or water. He’s certainly there, sharp shoulders hunched over as he puffs a strange-looking cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, but this time Liam can believe he’s looking at a proper ghost. Even the smoke looks more insubstantial than it ought to.
“You’re not supposed to be able to see me right now,” Zayn sighs heavily, without looking away from the window.
“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Liam says, feeling a bit defensive at that.
“‘S’pose not,” Zayn says eventually. He carries on looking out the window, breathing out the phantom smoke every few moments, and studiously ignoring Liam.
For lack of anything better to do, Liam sets about making tea and toast.
“How are you smoking?” he asks eventually, without making the conscious decision to do so. The connection between his brain and mouth seems to have gone shoddy.
Zayn shifts around to face Liam where he’s perching on a stool. “Dunno,” he says, shrugging. He’s starting to look a bit more substantial, and Liam finds himself hoping that’s a good sign. Technically, Zayn’s a housemate of his now. It’ll probably be best if they can get along well enough that Zayn doesn't have to try and will himself invisible every time Liam’s in the room. “I’m not really, I guess. Haz’d kill me if I actually smoked in his kitchen, anyway.” He waves around the hand that’s holding the cigarette, and it flickers as he moves, fuzzing in and out of clarity like a hologram struggling to find its footing. It doesn’t smell like cigarette smoke, Liam realizes. It’s almost -- it’s like flowers, like lavender. “Been smoking the same pack as long as I can remember. They never run out. ‘Cos they’re not real, I suppose. Only thing I can figure is they were in my pocket when...” He trails off. “Y’know.”
When I died, Liam assumes he means. “Oh. I guess that makes sense.” As much sense as any of this, anyway. “Like a... like a ghost cigarette.”
The sides of Zayn’s mouth quirk in what might be near to a smile. “Thought you said ghosts don’t exist.” He flicks the cigarette out of his fingers, and it winks out before it can tumble to the tile, gone as if it had never been there at all.
“I,” Liam starts, scraping a knife along his slightly too blackened toast, “am rapidly being presented with evidence to the contrary.”
Zayn does smile, at that.
-
Zayn doesn’t make much conversation while Liam eats the rest of his toast, but Liam thinks he’s not trying to go invisible anymore, so that’s good. Eventually it starts to rain, and Zayn stretches his arms over his head and floats off towards the study -- literally floats, hovering just above the ground, letting his toes point down lazily as he hovers up the back stairs. Liam gets the distinct impression he’s showing off at least a little.
-
They spend more time together after that, sort of by default, because neither one of them has much of anywhere to go during the day. Some days Liam doesn’t see Zayn at all, or just passes him on the stairs on their way to separate rooms -- Zayn stops floating, though, and mostly walks around like a normal person, only he doesn’t make any noise, unlike Liam, who makes the floorboards creak with every step. But other days, Zayn seems content to drift around near Liam, mostly silent, smoking his phantom cigarettes that smell inexplicably of lavender, flicking idly through books he never seems to read all the way through, or changing the station on the kitchen radio. He’s still mostly quiet, though, until Louis and Harry get home, or Niall stops by. Liam finds that he’s actually fine with this arrangement, sort of likes it even, and it takes hardly any time before he realizes he’s entirely used to Zayn’s presence, since in reality he’s more of a silent third roommate than a menacing paranormal entity.
But he still doesn’t have work, although he makes a few cursory attempts at calling openings he sees listed in the paper. He thinks he ought to be looking harder, but he’s still feeling a bit sorry for himself, and the quiet, sleepy atmosphere of the house during the day -- the cool floorboards, and the soft scent of lavender, and the way the rain knocks on the windows and the roof, and Zayn’s soft silent presence that Liam suddenly finds very soothing -- none of it makes him feel particularly motivated.
After three weeks, though, he wakes up abruptly in a panic, with nearly two months worth of deferred worry slamming into him at once. His pulse is racing like he’s run a mile instead of slept for nearly nine hours.
“Shit, shit,” he tells his empty attic room, and slams around to get dressed as quickly as possible, feeling overwhelmingly like he’s late for something important, even though he’s got nothing to be late for.
“I’ve wasted a month,” he laments to Harry and Louis in the kitchen once he’s dressed, resting his forehead in his hand.
“No such thing as wasted time, in my opinion,” Louis says from where he’s stirring sugar into his tea. Zayn’s curled up in a chair under one of the windows, occasionally stretching out his back in a distinctly feline way. Harry’s got his face down on the counter across from Liam, waiting forlornly for Louis to offer him his tea. Liam knows the routine, now, and even in the throes of his panic, that settles him a bit, makes him feel like he’s got at least something small to anchor himself on.
“It’s wasted if all I do is mope around the house,” Liam says, scowling at himself. “It’s been almost two months since I was sacked. I haven’t gone that long without a job since I was fifteen.”
“You’re allowed time to mope, mate.”
“Time to mope is like, a week, though. Fortnight tops. Oh, god, I’m going to be broke, you’ll have to evict me, I’ll have to live on the streets.”
“Pretty thing like you, though, you’ll do alright on the streets, I reckon.”
Liam rolls his eyes, but Harry laughs from where he’s face down, and even Zayn snorts. Liam hadn’t been sure he’d been listening.
“Liam’s too proper to be a good vagrant. Or prostitute,” Zayn says, not turning away from the window.
“Hey,” Liam says, not sure if he should be offended or not. “I could be a vagrant. Maybe? If I had to.” He doesn’t think that’s strictly true, but he feels like he should defend his capabilities anyway.
“No, he’s right,” Harry says, finally looking up. He’s got toast crumbs on his forehead. “Sorry, mate, you’d be hopeless. Dead in a week. We’ll have to keep you here, can’t have your blood on our hands.”
“Well, thanks, I think? But honestly, I’ll -- I’ll find something, I’ll make sure you’ve got the rent.” He feels a bit embarrassed, doesn’t want these lads that are rapidly becoming his best mates to think he’s lazy or entitled or the sort of person that sponges off the good nature of his friends.
“‘S’fine,” Harry says, waving his hand dismissively. “You can always pay us back in other ways.” He’s smiling in the way that Liam knows by now is a bit dangerous. “You can like, be our house boy. Cook us dinner, fetch us our slippers, sing little songs to entertain us.”
“God, no,” Louis says, pulling a horrified face. “I saw what happened when he made pasta on Tuesday--”
“Well I didn’t mean for it to spill everywhere,” Liam protests. It wasn’t his fault Zayn had popped up at his shoulder -- literally popped into visibility -- and surprised him, causing him to knock a full pot of pasta all across the floor. There are still flecks of red of sauce he’d missed cleaning up in the corners, and the kitchen had smelled of basil the rest of the day. “Plus you don’t even have slippers.” He’s not even sure Louis has shoes, since he barefoot almost all of the time.
“Anyway, you’d be put out if someone else did the cooking,” Louis says to Harry, ignoring Liam. Harry pouts, but he doesn’t protest, which is probably because it’s true -- Liam already knows how much Harry likes to show off his cooking, and the way he frowns and wrinkles his nose when he feels like the rest of them are in his way. He refers to it as “his kitchen” more often than not. Liam thinks Harry’s welcome to it -- he’s never been any good at cooking anyway, and the pasta incident just drove it further home.
“We ought to have left by now,” Harry says instead of arguing the point. “You’re late already.”
Louis shrugs disinterestedly. “What’s new, then? Not as late as yesterday, anyway. Compared to yesterday, I’m early.” He turns back to his tea, but a moment later starts to gather his things up, like it’d been his idea all along
They start out the front door together, but once Harry’s banged out down the walk, Louis turns back, coming back into the kitchen and leaning in to Liam so their shoulders touch.
“Seriously, Harry means it, and so do I. Not about cooking for us or anything, I mean. But if you’re in a spot with money,” Louis says, trailing off a bit. “Don’t, like. Just don’t worry about it, alright? We won’t kick you out. We’re keeping you.”
“But the rent,” Liam starts, but Louis cuts him off before he can make a proper protest, slapping one hand over Liam’s mouth and using the other one to twist his nipple. Liam yelps into Louis’ palm.
“You’re our mate,” Louis says. “You’ll pay what you can, okay? Don’t argue.”
And even though it’s against every one of Liam’s instincts -- the ones that tell him he’s only got himself to rely on, that he shouldn’t count on anything besides what he can control, that people can mean well and still leave you all alone to figure it out yourself -- he nods from behind Louis’ hand. There’s something about Louis, even when he’s being ridiculous and draping himself across Liam like an octopus, that doesn’t brook arguing with.
“They’re good lads, aren’t they?” Liam says to Zayn once Louis has gone. He really means to say it more to himself, but he’s gotten used to Zayn being there
“You’ve no idea,” Zayn says emphatically.
-
“What do you want to do, then?” Zayn asks an hour later. “Like, for work. Since you’re looking, and all.”
It throws Liam off a bit, because Zayn usually doesn’t talk much with him when they’re alone -- mostly just hellos and goodbye and questions that can be answered with yeses or nos. But he sounds calm now, like this is normal for them, and Liam knows it’d be impolite to just goggle at him, so he shrugs. “Dunno. I did editing before, for a newsletter. Don’t suppose I can afford to be very picky right now, though. I waited tables in school, I can always try that again.”
“Yeah, but what would you like to do?”
“Um -- I mean.” Liam’s not quite sure how to answer, because that’s not ever really been a luxury he could afford -- he’d needed work that paid enough for him to get by, and it wasn’t really relevant if it was the sort of work he wanted. “I guess I’d like to write. I mean, I’m probably not very good at it, and I dunno what sort of work you could get from that, but. I dunno. The writing classes I took in uni were my favorite, anyway.”
“Where’d you go to uni?” Zayn asks. He’s facing Liam now, not staring out the window, and the whole conversation is so strange for it’s apparent normalcy that Liam bites his lip to stop from laughing.
“In Birmingham, but just for a year. Had to drop out. Couldn’t afford it.”
Zayn doesn’t make that pitying face that people tend to, and Liam feels immediately grateful for it -- he hates that face so much, hates anyone feeling sorry for him. But Zayn just nods and doesn’t push it.
“Do -- or did you, I mean. Did you go?” Liam winces, because he’s not sure if it’s polite to ask a ghost about his life, but it also doesn’t seem polite to only talk about himself, either.
“Nah, never went. Always fancied I might someday, but then...” Zayn smiles wryly, gesturing down at himself.
“What would you want to study?”
Zayn contemplates it, flexing one of his ankles idly. “Dunno. I liked to draw. And I liked comics. Do they have a course for like, comics?”
“Probably,” Liam says.
“That, then. That’s what I would’ve done, I think.”
The sit silently for a while, and they have enough practice with that that it’s not uncomfortable, but it’s starting to verge on it by the time Zayn speaks.
“Have I been a dick to you so far?”
“What?” Liam says, spluttering a bit. “No, of course not, it’s -- no.” The answer, though, is yes, a little, at least the first day or two. He’s hasn’t really been much of anything to Liam since then besides a mostly silent presence.
“No, I mean, I know I sort of was. It’s just -- it’s weird when new people come in here, yeah?” He sits up properly to face Liam, and twists his fingers around in his hand almost nervously, even though Liam can’t think why he should be. Nervousness seems foreign on Zayn.
“I can only imagine,” Liam says, going for sympathetic. “And like, I’ve basically stolen your room, so I’m sort of a dick too, yeah?”
Zayn wrinkles his nose in disagreement. “You’re really not. Plus you needed a place to stay. I don’t even really need a room, anyway. ‘S’not like I really sleep or anything, y’know?”
“Still, though,” says Liam. “It was yours first.”
Zayn just hums, and Liam doesn’t know if it’s an agreement or not.
“Is it weird that sometimes I forget you’re -- like.” Liam doesn’t know if he should say the word. “Mostly it just seems like you’re another bloke that lives here.”
“Not weird,” Zayn says. “Kind of nice, actually. I forget sometimes too, but -- dunno, I figured no one else does.”
Liam pauses, because he knows what he wants to ask, but doesn’t know if he ought to, but they’ve exchanged more words this morning than in the last two weeks combined, so maybe it makes Liam a bit brave.
“Is it -- could I ask, um, how?” He hopes Zayn knows what he’s talking about without having to spell it out.
“How I died, you mean?” Zayn asks slowly, looking at Liam carefully.
“I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” Liam apologizes. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s alright,” Zayn says. “Just. It’s not a very good story, is all.” He’s quiet again for a moment, looking down at the countertop.
Liam thinks he must be wrong. He thinks Zayn has so many stories, so many bits of him that Liam can’t even begin to imagine, but he finds he’d like to hear them all.
But he drinks his tea, and they sit.
“Are you going out?” Zayn asks him eventually.
“In a while,” Liam tells him. He’d meant to go first thing after breakfast, apply to as many jobs as he could humanly apply to before collapsing and count on sheer volume if nothing else, but suddenly he doesn’t feel inclined to leave the kitchen at all.
-
“Does it get boring?” Liam asks Zayn the next day. They’re both on the sofa in the sitting room, Liam flipping through channels on the television and pausing when Zayn sees something interesting. Mostly it’s cartoons for children and nature documentaries.
“Does what get boring?” Zayn asks. He slouched in a way that can’t possibly be comfortable unless you haven’t got any bones.
“Like, during the day, when Harry and Louis are gone. And you said you don’t need a room because you don’t sleep, so I just kind of... wondered what you do.” And Liam sort of knows -- Zayn smokes and looks out windows a lot, and sits quietly, sometimes near Liam and sometimes not, but that can’t be everything. He must’ve done something before Liam turned up anyway. Liam wants to hear about it.
Zayn is looking at him curiously, like it’s not a question he’s used to hearing, and after a moment he shrugs. “Read, mostly. Watch crap movies. Harry used to leave the telly on for me all day, I think because he was worried I’d be bored. I finally had to tell him to stop, though, if I’d have had to watch one more episode of Jeremy Kyle I’d’ve brained myself or something.”
“Oh,” says Liam. He’s trying to sort out the mechanics of it. “So can you not, like -- I dunno, move stuff? Couldn’t you turn the television on by yourself?” He’s sure he’s seen Zayn move things, adjust knobs on the radio and unlatch windows, but maybe he just doesn’t remember properly, or understand it all. He’s sure he doesn’t understand it all, in fact.
“No, I can,” Zayn says, reaching over Liam to press the button on the remote to make the telly go silent. “I couldn’t before, though, I guess I had to like -- practice? Try to be more solid or something, I dunno. Otherwise I would just -- y’know, whoosh.” He waves his hand to mimic passing through something. “I’m better at it now, though.”
“And you can go invisible,” Liam asks, although it’s not really a question, because he’s seen it.
“Sort of,” Zayn says, sounding a little put out that he’s not got it fully under control. “Sometimes. Most people just don’t see me in the first place, though.”
“What else?” Liam asks. He really does want to understand, and he doesn’t think it’s just out of morbid curiosity.
“I don’t sleep, really, but I sort of... space out, or something,” Zayn says. “M’brain goes all quiet, like. Which is nice, when it’s night and everyone’s asleep and the television is rubbish. And,” he continues. “Can’t touch anyone else.” He shrugs in a way that seems almost apologetic.
“Really?” Liam asks. It strikes him as odd, because he’s sort of forgotten personal space exists since he’s moved in, but he supposes if he thinks about it, it’s always Harry and Louis who are draping over each other (and Liam as well, now), and Zayn usually keeps his distance. He’d assumed that had just been because he had a sense of boundaries.
“D’you -- I mean, here,” Zayn offers, gesturing for Liam to hold out his hand. He does, palms up, unsure of what to expect, but Zayn angles himself towards Liam and then holds his own hands above Liam’s outstretched ones, their open palms facing each others. He raises his eyebrows at Liam and then brings his hands down, and as if there’s nothing there at all, they slip right through Liam’s.
He forces himself not to gasp, but he sort of wants to, even though he’d been expecting it. It feels like hardly anything at all -- sort of like water, sort of like a breeze, and then nothing, and there are Zayn’s hands, back in his own lap, looking solid and normal and totally unlike they’ve just passed through Liam’s like air.
“Oh.”
“Is it weird?” Zayn asks, almost shy now.
“Not weird,” Liam insists. “Well, I mean, a little, but good weird.”
“Alright, yeah. Good weird.” Zayn seems to think about that for a moment, but then smiles, mostly to himself. “I can live with good weird.”
-
That night, Liam wonders if it’d meant anything, Zayn showing him like that, letting his own hands slip through Liam’s. He thinks it does, but he’s not sure if he’s just imagining it. It felt important, though.
The next morning, Zayn is waiting for him in the kitchen with a cup of tea, and they spend the rest of the day watching television together again, like it’s a habit, an old arrangement between the two of them. Liam grins like an idiot the whole time.
-
“If you like books,” Zayn starts to tell him several days later, and then doesn’t finish the sentence.
“I do,” Liam says after a minute. He’s got a bowl of cereal balanced on his stomach, and there’s a documentary about lions on the television that Zayn picked, and he’s focused on sitting very still so he doesn’t upend milk all over himself, so he can wait to see where Zayn’s going with this.
“I think I’ve had an idea for a job you might be able to get,” Zayn eventually says. “It’s to do with books, so I figured, since you like to write, you’d probably like working with books. Maybe? Or I could be wrong.”
“At this point I would literally take a job where people threw books at my face all day, so long as it pays money,” Liam tells him.
“It would just be selling them, I think. At a second hand store.”
“That’s even better, then,” Liam says, because he doesn’t actually want anyone chucking hard-bound books at his face.
“I can’t promise it, but you should check it out,” Zayn says, and then rummages around for a loose bit of paper (a receipt for a pair of trousers Louis had bought the previous week, it turns out), and scribbles down an address and name of a shop that Liam realizes he’s seen before -- it’s several blocks away, closer to his old flat than this house, actually, but he can remember seeing the storefront at least once before.
“The bloke that owns it, his name’s Arthur, if you ask for him and tell him you’re a friend of Waliyha’s brother, he might be able to help you out.” Zayn passes the address to Liam, his fingertips briefly passing through Liam’s as he does, and it makes Liam shudder, but in a way that he doesn’t mind at all -- he likes it quite a lot, actually.
-
Liam doesn’t stop by the bookstore for a few more days -- it rains like mad for three days straight and the wind howls so hard that he worries the roof might rip right off the attic in the middle of the night, so he can’t quite find the energy to go outside, and then later there’s a marathon of James Bond movies that he watches with Zayn that keeps him busy -- but once he does, he spots Arthur right away (“he’s built like a tree and he’s got stupid hair,” Zayn had described him). He repeats what Zayn had told him to say -- “I’m a friend of Waliyha’s brother, he mentioned this place to me a few times” -- and the look that Arthur gets on his face is one Liam knows a lot about -- pity.
“I didn’t -- oh,” says Arthur, making that face that Liam knows is meant to be sympathetic, but comes out mostly a bit nauseated. “You two’re friends? Close?”
Liam’s not sure what’s going on, since Zayn hadn’t really elaborated on the situation, so he just shrugs and tries to look vague. “I guess you could call it that.”
“Oh,” Arthur says breathlessly, and reaches over to pat Liam’s hand awkwardly. He knows this is pity, that he’s supposed to feel comforted, and he’s used it, has had this same interaction hundreds of times before, only he doesn’t think he’s said anything particularly pathetic, so he can’t work out for the world why it’s happening now.
Still, he knows what will happen as soon as Arthur makes that face, because in Liam’s experience, once people start feeling sorry for you it’s a short trip until they start bending over backwards to offer you things, and sure enough it’s less than ten minutes before Arthur offers to let him help out around the shop a few afternoons a week.
He’s got no idea what just happened, or why, but as he walks home, he feels a relief he hasn’t felt in months now. He’s got a job, he won’t be booted into the streets or forced to become Harry and Louis’ live-in butler, or worse, charity case. He’s got purpose, for what feels like the first time in ages.
“It go alright?” Zayn asks him when he gets back to the house. He’s draped over the sofa in the lounge, filling the room with the smell of lavender and reading an old Batman comic.
“Brilliant,” Liam says, waiting for Zayn to pull up his legs so he can sit beside him. Technically, he supposes, he could just sit down without waiting and let Zayn’s legs pass through him, but that seems sort of rude to just do uninvited. “He’s having me come in to help out a few days a week. I mean, it’s nothing full time, but it’s still -- it’s great. Thank you, really.”
“‘S’nothing,” Zayn says, smiling down at his comic.
“Who’s Waliyha, though?” Liam asks, because he’s been wondering the whole walk home. Zayn glances up at him, and the expression on his face is new -- sort of guilty, all squirrely like he’s been caught at something.
“Ah, I thought -- you didn’t figure it out?”
“No,” Liam says, feeling as if he must be missing something obvious. “Who’s Waliyha? Or, like, who’s her brother?”
“Um,” Zayn says. “Me?”
“You’re -- oh. Oh.” Liam gets it, now. Also, now Zayn is laughing at him.
“Did you not get that?” he asks between wheezing bursts of laughter.
“Of course not, I wouldn’t have -- if I did --” He drops his head into his hands, shielding his eyes. “Oh god, I’ve exploited my dead friend for personal gain,” he moans. Zayn only laughs harder.
“It’s not exploiting me if I tell you to do it, idiot.”
“It’s still wrong!” Liam protests.
“Says who? I’m the ghost, I’m fine with it, so it’s fine, see?”
“But he seemed so sorry for me, he asked if we were close and I said yes, and he got that look--”
But Zayn cuts him off with a renewed burst of laughter. “Wait, sorry, but. Did you say we were friends, or did you say we were close?”
Liam frowns. “Well I didn’t know we were talking about you, first of all, and he asked if we were close, and I didn’t know the answer, so I just said something like ‘you could call it that.’ I think.”
“Oh, that’s just.” If Zayn wasn’t already dead, Liam’d be concerned he was about to go into some sort of epileptic state from how hard he’s laughing. He’s actually wheezing a bit. “D’you realize what he thought? He probably thought you meant we’d dated.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Liam says. “Zayn! That isn’t funny! The poor man probably thinks I’m your grieving boyfriend, that’s why he offered me a job so quickly.”
“Liam, really, it’s fine,” Zayn tells him, trying to stop himself cackling. His success is mixed. “Honestly, Art’s an idiot, drove me crazy always hanging around our house eating everything and shit, so just consider it him paying me back a favor.”
“But -- but now I owe you,” Liam protests.
“You don’t, don’t be daft. I could help and I wanted to and I did, so just deal with it.” Liam thinks Zayn sounds startlingly like Louis in that moment.
“Alright,” he says eventually. He tries, and his success is mixed as well, but by the time they reach the end of an old Batman movie that’s on television, the guilt’s mostly gone, replaced by the relief he’d originally felt, and something else -- something that feels suspiciously like happiness.
( part 2)
r, 19,000 words
au where zayn is a ghost, and liam moves into his attic
warnings for major character death (just zayn, though, which sort of goes along with being a ghost) and mentioned past minor character death
also on ao3
February’s not been the best month for Liam. Not historically, and specifically not this one.
And really, he could’ve handled the whole out-of-a-job thing, honestly. Like, it was alright work, but it had never particularly been his dream to co-edit a mostly-nonsense, vaguely new-age lifestyle newsletter read mostly by aging hippies. But Dani had gotten him the job through one of her dance mates, a girl called Rain who did something she called “movement art” and was regularly barefoot in public, and who was Liam to complain? It was a job, and he got to write sometimes when he wasn’t correcting other people’s writing, and it paid actual money.
Still, he’d only been briefly surprised, and then not subsequently not surprised at all, when he’d turned up to work one day at the beginning of February to find the rest of the staff clearing out their things in boxes. “Oh,” his boss had said, carelessly yanking down a tapestry that hung behind his desk. “Hasn’t anyone told you?”
Something about tax, as it turned out. And specifically, the non-payment of it. For like, almost a decade.
Which is almost impressively negligent, in Liam’s opinion.
So he’d shoved his small collection of personal belongings, plus a few of the nicer pens, into his bag, and by the time his train was pulling back into the station near their flat, he’d mostly convinced himself that it was probably a good thing. New opportunities, and all.
He probably could’ve handled it.
And then three weeks later, Dani had been sitting at their kitchen table when he’d come home from the shops, which he’d immediately taken as a bad omen, as they’d never used their kitchen table once since they’d moved into the flat more than three years ago. Mostly they ate on the sofa. But Dani had been at the table, sitting with her back very straight, and her hands folded in front of her, and when she’d said they needed to talk, Liam had known it was over before she’d even started to speak.
Afterward, he’d offered to move out, because it seemed like the right thing to do, somehow. Dani’d protested, saying she’d go, but Liam found he couldn’t even think about the possibility of staying on there alone, not without her presence in the flat, so eventually she agreed, packed a small bag, told him she’d stay with her mum for a bit, and kissed him one last time on the cheek before closing the door softly behind her.
And that had been that.
Harry and Louis had been the only bit of good luck he’s had in ages, really. Their’s had been the first advert for a room he’d seen, or at least the first one he could afford, sort of, on the tiny bit of money he’d managed to save up before he’d been sacked. And the two of them hadn’t seemed like bad sorts at all when they met at a sandwich shop to talk, and really, that had been good enough for Liam. All in all, it takes less than a week between Dani finishing with him and Liam ending up in a taxi, his belongings in a few bags heaped around his feet.
So that’s how Liam turns up in front of the house -- a strange, sort of dilapidated little Victorian of a thing, squashed down into miniature and dropped in between two chip shops on a back street he’d never noticed before -- turning his new set of keys over in his hands, totally unable to recognize his life now from how it had been just a month ago.
-
It gets even stranger several minutes later when he opens the door to his new attic bedroom, and there’s an unfamiliar bloke sitting on one of the ledges under the dormered windows, gazing out over the front garden through a window.
“Oh,” Liam says. “Um, hello.”
The boy ignores him, though, so Liam shifts awkwardly, and then clears his throat. “Hello?” he tries again.
The boy looks up at that.
“Sorry, maybe I’ve made a mistake, I thought--” Liam stops, because the boy has turned away from him again. Liam looks at him for a moment. He seems about Liam’s age, twenty-something, and he’s got his black hair shoved off his face in a swoopy quiff, the sort Liam had never been able to pull off before he’d cut off all his hair. He’s a bit thin, sort of lanky, and Liam can see a tangle of dark tattoos curling up his forearm and disappearing into the rolled up cuff of his soft-looking plaid shirt. He doesn’t glance back at Liam.
“I’m meant to be moving into this room,” he says eventually, a bit too loud for the small attic, and the boy looks back at him, sighing heavily.
“Are you talking to me?” he asks.
“Yes?” Liam says. “Who else would I be talking to?”
The boy frowns at him, looking confused. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but then thinks better of it and closes it. Instead he shrugs, stands up from the window seat, and drifts over to the bed, where he flops down onto it, turns his back to Liam, and curls up into a ball.
“Um,” Liam says, taking a step backwards towards the door. The boy doesn’t respond, and Liam eventually reaches for the knob.
-
He figures he ought to find Harry and Louis, because possibly they’ll know why there’s a strange person in his room. Hopefully.
He finds them in the kitchen, and stops in the doorway, waiting for them to notice his presence.
“Liam!” Louis exclaims. “Hi!”
“Sorry, am I -- am I interrupting?” Liam asks, even though it’s obvious to him that he is, since Harry is sitting on one of the stools pulled up against the counter, and Louis is draped over his lap, getting in the way while Harry puts together a sandwich. Also, Harry’s not wearing a shirt. Also, Louis’ hand is shoved into one of the pockets of Harry’s trousers.
“‘Course not, mate, what’s up?” Louis says brightly. “Have you got all your stuff brought over, then? Room’s alright?” He pulls the sandwich away from Harry and starts eating, still sitting on top of Harry, who doesn’t look at all uncomfortable with the arrangement.
“No, yeah, everything’s good,” he says automatically, although it’s not, exactly. “Er, actually, it’s just -- when I went up there, you know.” He points up towards the attic, and blushes, because it probably doesn’t require clarification where he means. “There was someone already there? Another bloke? He looked, um. Comfortable?”
“Oh, that,” Louis says, waving a hand vaguely as he shoves half of the sandwich into his mouth. “That’s just Zayn.”
Oh, well, Liam thinks, it’s just Zayn. Louis says it so casually that it takes him a moment to realize that doesn’t actually clarify anything at all.
“I. Erm. Sorry, who’s Zayn?”
Louis says something, but whatever it is, Liam can’t translate it through all the food in Louis’ mouth. “I mean, it’s alright,” he says, because maybe he’s just misunderstood the situation. He’s got a history of doing that, it seems. “If it’s meant to be a shared room, or something, I just hadn’t realized--” And then he has another thought. “Or if you’ve already found someone, y’know, that’s fine. I can -- I can go.” He thinks of his three small bags, sitting in the front hall, that hold everything he’d taken with him from the old flat. It hadn’t been much at all -- too much of their things had been theirs, and Liam couldn’t manage to make himself bring anything along that had been part Dani’s, too, not even the towels from the bath, so mostly he’s got clothes, and a few pictures of his family. It won’t take long to move it again, if they’ve already given the attic to this Zayn bloke and forgotten to tell Liam. He feels suddenly exhausted just thinking about trying to sort out another place to stay, but at least -- at least he travels light.
“No, hang on,” Louis says, forcing himself to swallow his sandwich and only choking a little. Harry pats his back soothingly. “The room’s all yours, mate, don’t go.”
“Alright,” Liam says, nodding slowly. “I don’t understand, then?”
“‘S’haunted,” Harry supplies, smiling easily. “D’you want tea, though? Sorry, I didn’t ask.”
“Um. Yes, tea, thank you,” Liam answers, because manners are important. “And, erm. What? Haunted?” He sits carefully on one of the stools across from the two of them.
“Zayn’s a ghost,” Louis says, carrying on eating as he lets Harry up so he can move around the kitchen to put on the kettle.
“Ha,” Liam says, trying to laugh and nod as if he understands the joke. “Ha ha, that’s a good one, lads.” He slaps awkwardly at his thigh.
“Nah, ‘s’not a joke,” Harry says cheerfully, peering over his bare shoulder at Liam.
“I’m surprised you can see him,” Louis adds. He’s inhaled the rest of his sandwich, and now he’s flicking crumbs about with his finger, scattering them off the edge of his plate. Liam resists the urge to pick up the kitchen roll and start cleaning up after him. He’s only been here an hour, after all. And there are probably more important issues at hand.
“Yeah, usually people can’t. I don’t even see him all of the time,” says Harry. “Plus he’s right moody. Y’know how they can be.”
And again, Liam is nodding, even though, no, he definitely does not know.
Louis is nodding as well, though, as if this all makes perfect sense. “Haz and I are usually the only ones who see him much. Well, Niall too, but.” He shrugs. “But, like, my sister Lottie’s stayed here before, slept upstairs and all, and she can’t see him even when he’s right in front of her.”
“He had a proper sulk about that,” Harry agrees, and hands Liam his tea, plus a few biscuits. “D’you want anything else? Lou’s eaten, obviously, but I could make something else, if you like?”
“Tea’s good, thanks.” Liam busies himself taking a sip of it, just to take a moment and figure out what’s happening. He decides that most likely, they’re taking the piss. Like, 75%. That’s a thing people do, sometimes -- play pranks on their new housemates. Other less-likely explanations include Liam having some sort of minor stroke and hallucinating this whole thing as a side-effect. His new room actually having a ghost in it is at the very bottom of the list. Best to just play along for now, he thinks. He drinks his tea and tries to think, and not stare at how Louis is now licking a spare bit of icing from one of the biscuits off the side of Harry’s hand.
“We were thinking about going around to the pub later, if you’d like to come,” Louis says, once Harry’s hand is out of his mouth. “Our mate Niall works there. He’ll give us free pints, so long as the owner’s not around.”
It’s strange, because aside from the whole haunted room prank, Louis and Harry seem -- probably not quite normal, but nice. Liam’s only met them a few times now, once at the sandwich shop, and another when he’d come round to see the room and give them a cheque, but he thinks renting their attic won’t be bad -- might even be just the thing he needs. And getting a pint doesn’t sound bad. He can’t remember the last time he’s done that, actually, gone out for a drink with lads. So maybe he just needs to ignore the bit where they’re pretending his room is haunted. Maybe it’s whatsit -- friendly hazing, or initiation, or something.
“Alright,” he agrees. “I should start putting my things away first, though?”
“Right, yeah,” Harry says. “We can let you know when we’re about to go?”
“Okay,” Liam says, still feeling like he hasn’t quite got a handle on the situation. “Thanks for the tea.”
He heads for the front hall and gathers up his bags, and then trudges up the staircase. At the top there’s a landing and then a hall that branches off towards Louis’ and Harry’s room, the toilet, and another cozy room that Louis had called a study the first time Liam had been to the house, although all it had in it was a few guitars and a battered sofa. At the opposite end of the landing is the doorway towards the back stairs, the ones that twist down to a strange little nook behind the sitting room, and also up to the attic.
Probably whoever their mate is that they’d got to pretend to be a ghost has cleared out by now, he reasons as he climbs the stairs. He hadn’t seen anyone pass through the kitchen, but that’s up towards the front of the house on the ground level, so someone could easily have come down the back stairs and out through the back garden without Liam noticing.
Liam hopes that’s what’s happened, at least. He’s tired, and he just wants to put away his things and maybe have a rest. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with a surly bloke pretending to be a ghost.
At the top of the stairs he shifts his bags on his shoulder, takes a breath, and nudges open the door with his elbow, hoping the bloke is gone.
The bloke is not gone, in fact. He’s exactly where he’d been earlier, sprawled out across the bed, except now his shoes are off, and he’s got his sock feet crossed on top of the duvet. Liam’s duvet, now, technically. He’s got his feet all over Liam’s duvet.
“Oh,” he says when he sees Liam come in. “You’re back.”
“You’re still here,” Liam says.
Zayn -- although Liam hasn’t any idea if that’s actually his name or not, or just part of the prank -- scowls at him. “‘Course I am. This is where I stay.”
“No,” Liam says, losing patience. He lets his bags drop at the foot of the bed and sighs heavily. “Look, alright, whatever the prank is, I’m sure it’s very funny, but I’m tired, I’ve had a long bloody day, and I just want to put my shit away and sleep for a bit, so. Could you just clear off?”
Zayn looks affronted. “Why should I clear off? This is my room.”
“Really?” Liam snaps, feeling his annoyance build. “D’you rent it, then? Because I’ve just paid about all the money I’ve got in the world to stay here, in what I was told was a vacant room, and I’m trying to be a good sport and play along, but this is really, definitely, not your room.”
“Lou and Haz’ll tell you,” Zayn says simply, crossing his arms across his chest.
“Oh, yeah, they told me,” Liam says, rolling his eyes. “They told me that you’re a ghost.”
Zayn’s face hardens a little, but he doesn’t move. “Well. There you go.”
“There what?” Liam thinks he might be losing his mind, a bit. The exhaustion of the last two weeks is setting in, and this isn’t funny anymore.
“That’s why I’m here, then.”
"That’s nonsense.” A small headache is blooming behind Liam’s eyes, and he rubs at it with the heel of his hand. “Ghosts don’t exist.”
“Sorry, what?” Zayn’s tone is brittle now, and his expression has gotten even more sour, if that’s possible.
“Ghosts. Do not. Exist,” Liam repeats, pausing for emphasis.
“You -- that’s not -- ugh,” Zayn splutters, looking furious, and a bit at a loss for words.
“Could you please just go now?” Liam asks. He knows he’s on the verge of begging, but all he wants to do is sleep.
“Fine,” Zayn spits. “Fine, alright, I’ll go.” He stands up from the bed, but -- Liam really must have a proper headache, or something else making his eyes go all wonky, because it doesn’t look right. Zayn moves strangely, too fluid, and the rickety bed doesn’t move at all even as he shifts his weight off it. “You’re a twat, you know that?”
Liam’s about to open his mouth to argue, to inform him that there’s absolutely nothing about this situation that makes him the twat, but all of a sudden he forgets what he wants to say, forgets how to say much at all, because in one instant, Zayn is scowling in front of him, and in the next he’s gone, disappearing quicker than Liam can blink, leaving only empty air and a slight electric crackling behind him.
-
Liam stands blinking at the empty space in front of him for several minutes. He thinks he may have forgotten how to move his limbs. He thinks he’s forgotten just about everything, really. There’s a slight hum in his ears, more the absence of sound than anything, and everything’s gone all slow and syrupy, like time has suspended.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there like that, but eventually there’s a thump from somewhere downstairs, and it snaps him out of the trance, breaks whatever spell had come over him. Sound comes rushing back, and he takes two jerky steps backward, his heart suddenly beating a drumbeat like it’s just remembered how.
Forcing himself to hold it together as best as he possibly can -- which is scarcely at all, but he thinks that ought to be allowed, given the circumstances -- he stumbles around the empty space where Zayn had been just a moment before, and almost breaks his neck careening down the stairs and towards the kitchen, where Harry and Louis are in pretty much the same position he’d left them just a few moments ago.
They both look up at him in a synchronized movement when he comes around the corner, and Harry makes a concerned little expression. Probably because Liam had only been gone for less than five minutes, and now he’s come racing back like a madman. If the way he feels is any indication of how he looks, he imagines he must look pale and on the verge of hysterics.
“You alright?” Harry asks.
“There was, um,” Liam starts. He doesn’t know how to start this sentence properly. “Zayn, and upstairs, and. Um.” He breathes heavily.
“Yeah?” Harry says.
“He disappeared,” Liam says. “Just, like. Into nothing.”
“Oh,” Louis says, sounding almost disappointed. “Did you say something to make him out of sorts?”
“I -- no, I mean.” Liam doesn’t know how to wrap his head around this, because the question shouldn’t be -- the question should be how is there a ghost in his room, not whether or not he’s done something to offend it. “Well, like. I might’ve told him that ghosts don’t exist?”
“Oh, no, he doesn’t like that,” Louis says.
“Oh,” Liam says. He’s trying to will his pulse to return to normal. “Okay. He doesn’t, uh. Like that. So, um. You weren’t joking, then?”
“Nope,” Harry says, looking sympathetic. “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? I guess we sort of forget, since we’re used to it and all.”
“I just assumed it was a prank,” Liam says weakly.
“I wish,” Louis says regretfully. “That’d be legendary. Trick someone into thinking their house’s haunted by making Zayn pop round and then disappear. Except I suppose it wouldn’t be a prank, then, as much as an actual haunting. Hm.” He scowls a little, like he’s trying to sort out the details necessary to using a ghost as the punchline in a practical joke.
“So -- he can just disappear when he feels like it?” Liam asks. He wants to -- he doesn’t know. Get his head around this, if that’s even possible. It must be, because Harry and Louis seem to have acclimatized themselves to it all, to the point where they can discuss it calmly, in the kitchen even.
“Mm, sort of,” Harry says. “It’s like -- I mean, we don’t really know the rules.”
“The ghost rules,” Louis says to himself, laughing a bit.
“He can disappear if he wants, but it doesn’t always work all the way. Sometimes his quiff hangs about, or he just goes a bit pale. But then, other times people can’t see him at all, even if he’d like them to.” Harry shrugs.
“Have you, um,” Liam starts. “Have you asked him about it? The, uh. Ghost rules?”
“Oh yeah, loads,” Harry says. “He doesn’t really know either. He always says it’s not like he knows any other ghosts to ask anyway.”
“Listen, is it a problem?” Louis asks. “Like, we understand, and honestly, we didn’t think you’d even be able to see him at all, or else we’d have told you, but--”
“Bit hard to bring that up beforehand without sounding insane, though,” Harry finishes for him. “Figured it wouldn’t be an issue. But, um. If it is? You can have your cheque back, it’s alright.”
Liam breathes once, and then twice. He flexes the fingers on his hand and shifts his weight from one foot to the other and back again. He thinks about his options.
Option one is to take his bags and go wander around London and hope he runs into someone who’ll offer him a room, available for tonight, with furniture to sleep on, for a rent that he can actually afford. He’s skeptical that he’s lucky enough -- especially lately -- for that to work out for him twice in a week.
Option two is to find a hotel room, but he really, really hasn’t got the money for that.
Option three is to phone Danielle and ask if he can come back, at least for a bit, and that doesn’t feel like an option at all.
Which leaves option four: stay.
“Alright,” he says. “I’ll, um. I’ll stay.” Harry and Louis seem to be doing well enough sharing a house with a ghost. There’s no reason Liam can’t do the same. “But he’s not, like. The bad sort of ghost, right?” He can scarcely believe he’s asking the question, having this conversation at all. But he’s never met a ghost before, and everything he’s heard always makes them out to be strange and scary, and on occasion, a bit evil.
“No! No, of course not,” Louis says, shaking his head meaningfully. “I promise, like. He’s just normal, pretty much. Sort of a twat sometimes, but he’s really a good lad. He’s -- is it weird to say he’s a good mate? Because he is, even if it is weird.”
“We like living with him,” Harry adds. “He’ll come around, y’know. If you two got off on the wrong foot.”
“And if he doesn’t he can mope about in the study until he does,” Louis says, shrugging.
“Right, okay,” says Liam. He’s going to roll with these punches, he decides. These very, very strange punches. “Listen, I think I won’t go to the pub with you tonight, if that’s alright. Sort of a strange day, you know?”
“‘Course, yeah,” Harry says. “Next time.”
Eventually the two of them leave the kitchen, Louis telling Harry as they go that he’s got to put a shirt on if they want to be let into the pub, because apparently that’s been an issue in the past -- Harry turning up half-naked, and being surprised when Niall wouldn’t let them through the door. Harry whines and drags his feet stompily up the stairs in protest, tripping gracelessly as he does, but when they shuffle out a half hour later, he’s got a jumper on and only a mildly sullen look on his face.
Liam stays in the kitchen for a long while, making several cups of tea and putting off going upstairs. He’s still trying to roll with the punches, but he thinks he can be forgiven for needing the space of more than an hour to get used to -- to all of this. Either way, he’s suddenly very aware of all the noises the now empty (or, like, mostly empty) house is making around him -- the refrigerator kicks on, setting a low hum thrumming beneath everything, and the stray creaks and bumps that are unquestionably nothing more than an old house settling make Liam jump every time.
He doesn’t go around the kitchen and sitting room turning on every single light he can find, but he certainly thinks about it.
-
He runs outs of patience with himself and finally decides to go back upstairs at half eleven.
Zayn’s not there when Liam cautiously pokes his head around the door. Unconsciously, he breathes a sigh of relief. He knows what Louis and Harry had said, and honestly, there hadn’t been anything unsettling or sinister about Zayn up until the point when he’d disappeared. But still. He’s a ghost, apparently, and Liam’s never believed in ghosts, as long as he can remember, and now there’s a good chance one will be lurking around the corner at any given point.
He hates that it makes his heart race nervously, but it does anyway.
Zayn doesn’t show up while Liam starts to put his clothes away in the wardrobe, or sets up a picture of his sisters and their parents on the table beside the bed. When Liam goes to change out of his clothes into joggers and a worn out t-shirt, he realizes it’s possible that Zayn might actually be there, just staying invisible, but -- and he has absolutely no idea what he’s basing this on -- the room just feels empty, so he thinks he must have gone somewhere else to be angry.
He still turns his back self-consciously away from the open room as he pulls his clothes off, though.
When he’s in bed and got the blankets pulled up around his chin, he hesitates for a moment before pulling the chain on the lamp on his bedside table, telling himself firmly not to be stupid.
It’s still a long while before he closes his eyes, though, staring up at the gabled ceiling in the dark, and even longer before he sleeps.
-
Harry and Louis are gone by the time Liam wakes up the next morning, shivering a bit from the chill of the attic. Louis teaches at a primary school, Liam remembers he’d said, and Harry does -- some course at uni, Liam forgets which one, in the morning before he goes to work at a posh little art gallery.
Liam stretches and feels his back pop. He hadn’t woken once in the night, which surprises him now, after the fact. Now that he’s awake he feels suddenly hyperaware, glancing around rapidly to see if he can spot Zayn anywhere, lurking in a corner or something. He can’t, as it turns out.
He stays in bed for a bit, watching a handful of tiny snowflakes drift past one of the windows. It looks bleak and gray outside, and freezing cold, and Liam’s briefly glad that he hasn’t got any reason to go outside today, until he remembers exactly why that is, and feels a familiar weight settle unhappily in his stomach. Right, he thinks. No Dani. No job.
He bites his lip unhappily, and pulls the thick duvet back up to his chin, flopping back down and rattling the metal bedframe as he does. He stares at the few bits of dust he can see swirling around in the dim light that’s filtering in, and before long his eyelids droop, and he drifts off to sleep again before he can help it.
-
When he finally slouches into the kitchen several hours later, Zayn is there, sitting on one of the chairs.
So not a dream, then, Liam is forced to admit.
Zayn’s gazing out a window again. He seems to do that quite a lot. And also, somehow, he appears to be smoking. Liam hadn’t known ghosts could smoke. Then again, he hadn’t known ghosts existed at all until yesterday, so maybe the gaps in his knowledge are understandable.
“Hi,” he says tentatively. He’s surprised to realize that his frustration -- and later, fear -- from the night before have mostly melted away, now that he’s looking at Zayn. He feels nervous, but also, distantly, a bit guilty -- like, if the attic’s really Zayn’s room, he supposes he can understand why he’s upset. He’s a bit relieved that Zayn’s not off being invisible and angry with Liam, actually.
Or, at least, he doesn’t think he is, but then he remembers what Harry had said last night, about how it doesn’t always work right, and Zayn sometimes stays visible even when he doesn’t want to. He’s looking different, now, less solid than he had the night before, almost like looking at something through a mist, or water. He’s certainly there, sharp shoulders hunched over as he puffs a strange-looking cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, but this time Liam can believe he’s looking at a proper ghost. Even the smoke looks more insubstantial than it ought to.
“You’re not supposed to be able to see me right now,” Zayn sighs heavily, without looking away from the window.
“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Liam says, feeling a bit defensive at that.
“‘S’pose not,” Zayn says eventually. He carries on looking out the window, breathing out the phantom smoke every few moments, and studiously ignoring Liam.
For lack of anything better to do, Liam sets about making tea and toast.
“How are you smoking?” he asks eventually, without making the conscious decision to do so. The connection between his brain and mouth seems to have gone shoddy.
Zayn shifts around to face Liam where he’s perching on a stool. “Dunno,” he says, shrugging. He’s starting to look a bit more substantial, and Liam finds himself hoping that’s a good sign. Technically, Zayn’s a housemate of his now. It’ll probably be best if they can get along well enough that Zayn doesn't have to try and will himself invisible every time Liam’s in the room. “I’m not really, I guess. Haz’d kill me if I actually smoked in his kitchen, anyway.” He waves around the hand that’s holding the cigarette, and it flickers as he moves, fuzzing in and out of clarity like a hologram struggling to find its footing. It doesn’t smell like cigarette smoke, Liam realizes. It’s almost -- it’s like flowers, like lavender. “Been smoking the same pack as long as I can remember. They never run out. ‘Cos they’re not real, I suppose. Only thing I can figure is they were in my pocket when...” He trails off. “Y’know.”
When I died, Liam assumes he means. “Oh. I guess that makes sense.” As much sense as any of this, anyway. “Like a... like a ghost cigarette.”
The sides of Zayn’s mouth quirk in what might be near to a smile. “Thought you said ghosts don’t exist.” He flicks the cigarette out of his fingers, and it winks out before it can tumble to the tile, gone as if it had never been there at all.
“I,” Liam starts, scraping a knife along his slightly too blackened toast, “am rapidly being presented with evidence to the contrary.”
Zayn does smile, at that.
-
Zayn doesn’t make much conversation while Liam eats the rest of his toast, but Liam thinks he’s not trying to go invisible anymore, so that’s good. Eventually it starts to rain, and Zayn stretches his arms over his head and floats off towards the study -- literally floats, hovering just above the ground, letting his toes point down lazily as he hovers up the back stairs. Liam gets the distinct impression he’s showing off at least a little.
-
They spend more time together after that, sort of by default, because neither one of them has much of anywhere to go during the day. Some days Liam doesn’t see Zayn at all, or just passes him on the stairs on their way to separate rooms -- Zayn stops floating, though, and mostly walks around like a normal person, only he doesn’t make any noise, unlike Liam, who makes the floorboards creak with every step. But other days, Zayn seems content to drift around near Liam, mostly silent, smoking his phantom cigarettes that smell inexplicably of lavender, flicking idly through books he never seems to read all the way through, or changing the station on the kitchen radio. He’s still mostly quiet, though, until Louis and Harry get home, or Niall stops by. Liam finds that he’s actually fine with this arrangement, sort of likes it even, and it takes hardly any time before he realizes he’s entirely used to Zayn’s presence, since in reality he’s more of a silent third roommate than a menacing paranormal entity.
But he still doesn’t have work, although he makes a few cursory attempts at calling openings he sees listed in the paper. He thinks he ought to be looking harder, but he’s still feeling a bit sorry for himself, and the quiet, sleepy atmosphere of the house during the day -- the cool floorboards, and the soft scent of lavender, and the way the rain knocks on the windows and the roof, and Zayn’s soft silent presence that Liam suddenly finds very soothing -- none of it makes him feel particularly motivated.
After three weeks, though, he wakes up abruptly in a panic, with nearly two months worth of deferred worry slamming into him at once. His pulse is racing like he’s run a mile instead of slept for nearly nine hours.
“Shit, shit,” he tells his empty attic room, and slams around to get dressed as quickly as possible, feeling overwhelmingly like he’s late for something important, even though he’s got nothing to be late for.
“I’ve wasted a month,” he laments to Harry and Louis in the kitchen once he’s dressed, resting his forehead in his hand.
“No such thing as wasted time, in my opinion,” Louis says from where he’s stirring sugar into his tea. Zayn’s curled up in a chair under one of the windows, occasionally stretching out his back in a distinctly feline way. Harry’s got his face down on the counter across from Liam, waiting forlornly for Louis to offer him his tea. Liam knows the routine, now, and even in the throes of his panic, that settles him a bit, makes him feel like he’s got at least something small to anchor himself on.
“It’s wasted if all I do is mope around the house,” Liam says, scowling at himself. “It’s been almost two months since I was sacked. I haven’t gone that long without a job since I was fifteen.”
“You’re allowed time to mope, mate.”
“Time to mope is like, a week, though. Fortnight tops. Oh, god, I’m going to be broke, you’ll have to evict me, I’ll have to live on the streets.”
“Pretty thing like you, though, you’ll do alright on the streets, I reckon.”
Liam rolls his eyes, but Harry laughs from where he’s face down, and even Zayn snorts. Liam hadn’t been sure he’d been listening.
“Liam’s too proper to be a good vagrant. Or prostitute,” Zayn says, not turning away from the window.
“Hey,” Liam says, not sure if he should be offended or not. “I could be a vagrant. Maybe? If I had to.” He doesn’t think that’s strictly true, but he feels like he should defend his capabilities anyway.
“No, he’s right,” Harry says, finally looking up. He’s got toast crumbs on his forehead. “Sorry, mate, you’d be hopeless. Dead in a week. We’ll have to keep you here, can’t have your blood on our hands.”
“Well, thanks, I think? But honestly, I’ll -- I’ll find something, I’ll make sure you’ve got the rent.” He feels a bit embarrassed, doesn’t want these lads that are rapidly becoming his best mates to think he’s lazy or entitled or the sort of person that sponges off the good nature of his friends.
“‘S’fine,” Harry says, waving his hand dismissively. “You can always pay us back in other ways.” He’s smiling in the way that Liam knows by now is a bit dangerous. “You can like, be our house boy. Cook us dinner, fetch us our slippers, sing little songs to entertain us.”
“God, no,” Louis says, pulling a horrified face. “I saw what happened when he made pasta on Tuesday--”
“Well I didn’t mean for it to spill everywhere,” Liam protests. It wasn’t his fault Zayn had popped up at his shoulder -- literally popped into visibility -- and surprised him, causing him to knock a full pot of pasta all across the floor. There are still flecks of red of sauce he’d missed cleaning up in the corners, and the kitchen had smelled of basil the rest of the day. “Plus you don’t even have slippers.” He’s not even sure Louis has shoes, since he barefoot almost all of the time.
“Anyway, you’d be put out if someone else did the cooking,” Louis says to Harry, ignoring Liam. Harry pouts, but he doesn’t protest, which is probably because it’s true -- Liam already knows how much Harry likes to show off his cooking, and the way he frowns and wrinkles his nose when he feels like the rest of them are in his way. He refers to it as “his kitchen” more often than not. Liam thinks Harry’s welcome to it -- he’s never been any good at cooking anyway, and the pasta incident just drove it further home.
“We ought to have left by now,” Harry says instead of arguing the point. “You’re late already.”
Louis shrugs disinterestedly. “What’s new, then? Not as late as yesterday, anyway. Compared to yesterday, I’m early.” He turns back to his tea, but a moment later starts to gather his things up, like it’d been his idea all along
They start out the front door together, but once Harry’s banged out down the walk, Louis turns back, coming back into the kitchen and leaning in to Liam so their shoulders touch.
“Seriously, Harry means it, and so do I. Not about cooking for us or anything, I mean. But if you’re in a spot with money,” Louis says, trailing off a bit. “Don’t, like. Just don’t worry about it, alright? We won’t kick you out. We’re keeping you.”
“But the rent,” Liam starts, but Louis cuts him off before he can make a proper protest, slapping one hand over Liam’s mouth and using the other one to twist his nipple. Liam yelps into Louis’ palm.
“You’re our mate,” Louis says. “You’ll pay what you can, okay? Don’t argue.”
And even though it’s against every one of Liam’s instincts -- the ones that tell him he’s only got himself to rely on, that he shouldn’t count on anything besides what he can control, that people can mean well and still leave you all alone to figure it out yourself -- he nods from behind Louis’ hand. There’s something about Louis, even when he’s being ridiculous and draping himself across Liam like an octopus, that doesn’t brook arguing with.
“They’re good lads, aren’t they?” Liam says to Zayn once Louis has gone. He really means to say it more to himself, but he’s gotten used to Zayn being there
“You’ve no idea,” Zayn says emphatically.
-
“What do you want to do, then?” Zayn asks an hour later. “Like, for work. Since you’re looking, and all.”
It throws Liam off a bit, because Zayn usually doesn’t talk much with him when they’re alone -- mostly just hellos and goodbye and questions that can be answered with yeses or nos. But he sounds calm now, like this is normal for them, and Liam knows it’d be impolite to just goggle at him, so he shrugs. “Dunno. I did editing before, for a newsletter. Don’t suppose I can afford to be very picky right now, though. I waited tables in school, I can always try that again.”
“Yeah, but what would you like to do?”
“Um -- I mean.” Liam’s not quite sure how to answer, because that’s not ever really been a luxury he could afford -- he’d needed work that paid enough for him to get by, and it wasn’t really relevant if it was the sort of work he wanted. “I guess I’d like to write. I mean, I’m probably not very good at it, and I dunno what sort of work you could get from that, but. I dunno. The writing classes I took in uni were my favorite, anyway.”
“Where’d you go to uni?” Zayn asks. He’s facing Liam now, not staring out the window, and the whole conversation is so strange for it’s apparent normalcy that Liam bites his lip to stop from laughing.
“In Birmingham, but just for a year. Had to drop out. Couldn’t afford it.”
Zayn doesn’t make that pitying face that people tend to, and Liam feels immediately grateful for it -- he hates that face so much, hates anyone feeling sorry for him. But Zayn just nods and doesn’t push it.
“Do -- or did you, I mean. Did you go?” Liam winces, because he’s not sure if it’s polite to ask a ghost about his life, but it also doesn’t seem polite to only talk about himself, either.
“Nah, never went. Always fancied I might someday, but then...” Zayn smiles wryly, gesturing down at himself.
“What would you want to study?”
Zayn contemplates it, flexing one of his ankles idly. “Dunno. I liked to draw. And I liked comics. Do they have a course for like, comics?”
“Probably,” Liam says.
“That, then. That’s what I would’ve done, I think.”
The sit silently for a while, and they have enough practice with that that it’s not uncomfortable, but it’s starting to verge on it by the time Zayn speaks.
“Have I been a dick to you so far?”
“What?” Liam says, spluttering a bit. “No, of course not, it’s -- no.” The answer, though, is yes, a little, at least the first day or two. He’s hasn’t really been much of anything to Liam since then besides a mostly silent presence.
“No, I mean, I know I sort of was. It’s just -- it’s weird when new people come in here, yeah?” He sits up properly to face Liam, and twists his fingers around in his hand almost nervously, even though Liam can’t think why he should be. Nervousness seems foreign on Zayn.
“I can only imagine,” Liam says, going for sympathetic. “And like, I’ve basically stolen your room, so I’m sort of a dick too, yeah?”
Zayn wrinkles his nose in disagreement. “You’re really not. Plus you needed a place to stay. I don’t even really need a room, anyway. ‘S’not like I really sleep or anything, y’know?”
“Still, though,” says Liam. “It was yours first.”
Zayn just hums, and Liam doesn’t know if it’s an agreement or not.
“Is it weird that sometimes I forget you’re -- like.” Liam doesn’t know if he should say the word. “Mostly it just seems like you’re another bloke that lives here.”
“Not weird,” Zayn says. “Kind of nice, actually. I forget sometimes too, but -- dunno, I figured no one else does.”
Liam pauses, because he knows what he wants to ask, but doesn’t know if he ought to, but they’ve exchanged more words this morning than in the last two weeks combined, so maybe it makes Liam a bit brave.
“Is it -- could I ask, um, how?” He hopes Zayn knows what he’s talking about without having to spell it out.
“How I died, you mean?” Zayn asks slowly, looking at Liam carefully.
“I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” Liam apologizes. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s alright,” Zayn says. “Just. It’s not a very good story, is all.” He’s quiet again for a moment, looking down at the countertop.
Liam thinks he must be wrong. He thinks Zayn has so many stories, so many bits of him that Liam can’t even begin to imagine, but he finds he’d like to hear them all.
But he drinks his tea, and they sit.
“Are you going out?” Zayn asks him eventually.
“In a while,” Liam tells him. He’d meant to go first thing after breakfast, apply to as many jobs as he could humanly apply to before collapsing and count on sheer volume if nothing else, but suddenly he doesn’t feel inclined to leave the kitchen at all.
-
“Does it get boring?” Liam asks Zayn the next day. They’re both on the sofa in the sitting room, Liam flipping through channels on the television and pausing when Zayn sees something interesting. Mostly it’s cartoons for children and nature documentaries.
“Does what get boring?” Zayn asks. He slouched in a way that can’t possibly be comfortable unless you haven’t got any bones.
“Like, during the day, when Harry and Louis are gone. And you said you don’t need a room because you don’t sleep, so I just kind of... wondered what you do.” And Liam sort of knows -- Zayn smokes and looks out windows a lot, and sits quietly, sometimes near Liam and sometimes not, but that can’t be everything. He must’ve done something before Liam turned up anyway. Liam wants to hear about it.
Zayn is looking at him curiously, like it’s not a question he’s used to hearing, and after a moment he shrugs. “Read, mostly. Watch crap movies. Harry used to leave the telly on for me all day, I think because he was worried I’d be bored. I finally had to tell him to stop, though, if I’d have had to watch one more episode of Jeremy Kyle I’d’ve brained myself or something.”
“Oh,” says Liam. He’s trying to sort out the mechanics of it. “So can you not, like -- I dunno, move stuff? Couldn’t you turn the television on by yourself?” He’s sure he’s seen Zayn move things, adjust knobs on the radio and unlatch windows, but maybe he just doesn’t remember properly, or understand it all. He’s sure he doesn’t understand it all, in fact.
“No, I can,” Zayn says, reaching over Liam to press the button on the remote to make the telly go silent. “I couldn’t before, though, I guess I had to like -- practice? Try to be more solid or something, I dunno. Otherwise I would just -- y’know, whoosh.” He waves his hand to mimic passing through something. “I’m better at it now, though.”
“And you can go invisible,” Liam asks, although it’s not really a question, because he’s seen it.
“Sort of,” Zayn says, sounding a little put out that he’s not got it fully under control. “Sometimes. Most people just don’t see me in the first place, though.”
“What else?” Liam asks. He really does want to understand, and he doesn’t think it’s just out of morbid curiosity.
“I don’t sleep, really, but I sort of... space out, or something,” Zayn says. “M’brain goes all quiet, like. Which is nice, when it’s night and everyone’s asleep and the television is rubbish. And,” he continues. “Can’t touch anyone else.” He shrugs in a way that seems almost apologetic.
“Really?” Liam asks. It strikes him as odd, because he’s sort of forgotten personal space exists since he’s moved in, but he supposes if he thinks about it, it’s always Harry and Louis who are draping over each other (and Liam as well, now), and Zayn usually keeps his distance. He’d assumed that had just been because he had a sense of boundaries.
“D’you -- I mean, here,” Zayn offers, gesturing for Liam to hold out his hand. He does, palms up, unsure of what to expect, but Zayn angles himself towards Liam and then holds his own hands above Liam’s outstretched ones, their open palms facing each others. He raises his eyebrows at Liam and then brings his hands down, and as if there’s nothing there at all, they slip right through Liam’s.
He forces himself not to gasp, but he sort of wants to, even though he’d been expecting it. It feels like hardly anything at all -- sort of like water, sort of like a breeze, and then nothing, and there are Zayn’s hands, back in his own lap, looking solid and normal and totally unlike they’ve just passed through Liam’s like air.
“Oh.”
“Is it weird?” Zayn asks, almost shy now.
“Not weird,” Liam insists. “Well, I mean, a little, but good weird.”
“Alright, yeah. Good weird.” Zayn seems to think about that for a moment, but then smiles, mostly to himself. “I can live with good weird.”
-
That night, Liam wonders if it’d meant anything, Zayn showing him like that, letting his own hands slip through Liam’s. He thinks it does, but he’s not sure if he’s just imagining it. It felt important, though.
The next morning, Zayn is waiting for him in the kitchen with a cup of tea, and they spend the rest of the day watching television together again, like it’s a habit, an old arrangement between the two of them. Liam grins like an idiot the whole time.
-
“If you like books,” Zayn starts to tell him several days later, and then doesn’t finish the sentence.
“I do,” Liam says after a minute. He’s got a bowl of cereal balanced on his stomach, and there’s a documentary about lions on the television that Zayn picked, and he’s focused on sitting very still so he doesn’t upend milk all over himself, so he can wait to see where Zayn’s going with this.
“I think I’ve had an idea for a job you might be able to get,” Zayn eventually says. “It’s to do with books, so I figured, since you like to write, you’d probably like working with books. Maybe? Or I could be wrong.”
“At this point I would literally take a job where people threw books at my face all day, so long as it pays money,” Liam tells him.
“It would just be selling them, I think. At a second hand store.”
“That’s even better, then,” Liam says, because he doesn’t actually want anyone chucking hard-bound books at his face.
“I can’t promise it, but you should check it out,” Zayn says, and then rummages around for a loose bit of paper (a receipt for a pair of trousers Louis had bought the previous week, it turns out), and scribbles down an address and name of a shop that Liam realizes he’s seen before -- it’s several blocks away, closer to his old flat than this house, actually, but he can remember seeing the storefront at least once before.
“The bloke that owns it, his name’s Arthur, if you ask for him and tell him you’re a friend of Waliyha’s brother, he might be able to help you out.” Zayn passes the address to Liam, his fingertips briefly passing through Liam’s as he does, and it makes Liam shudder, but in a way that he doesn’t mind at all -- he likes it quite a lot, actually.
-
Liam doesn’t stop by the bookstore for a few more days -- it rains like mad for three days straight and the wind howls so hard that he worries the roof might rip right off the attic in the middle of the night, so he can’t quite find the energy to go outside, and then later there’s a marathon of James Bond movies that he watches with Zayn that keeps him busy -- but once he does, he spots Arthur right away (“he’s built like a tree and he’s got stupid hair,” Zayn had described him). He repeats what Zayn had told him to say -- “I’m a friend of Waliyha’s brother, he mentioned this place to me a few times” -- and the look that Arthur gets on his face is one Liam knows a lot about -- pity.
“I didn’t -- oh,” says Arthur, making that face that Liam knows is meant to be sympathetic, but comes out mostly a bit nauseated. “You two’re friends? Close?”
Liam’s not sure what’s going on, since Zayn hadn’t really elaborated on the situation, so he just shrugs and tries to look vague. “I guess you could call it that.”
“Oh,” Arthur says breathlessly, and reaches over to pat Liam’s hand awkwardly. He knows this is pity, that he’s supposed to feel comforted, and he’s used it, has had this same interaction hundreds of times before, only he doesn’t think he’s said anything particularly pathetic, so he can’t work out for the world why it’s happening now.
Still, he knows what will happen as soon as Arthur makes that face, because in Liam’s experience, once people start feeling sorry for you it’s a short trip until they start bending over backwards to offer you things, and sure enough it’s less than ten minutes before Arthur offers to let him help out around the shop a few afternoons a week.
He’s got no idea what just happened, or why, but as he walks home, he feels a relief he hasn’t felt in months now. He’s got a job, he won’t be booted into the streets or forced to become Harry and Louis’ live-in butler, or worse, charity case. He’s got purpose, for what feels like the first time in ages.
“It go alright?” Zayn asks him when he gets back to the house. He’s draped over the sofa in the lounge, filling the room with the smell of lavender and reading an old Batman comic.
“Brilliant,” Liam says, waiting for Zayn to pull up his legs so he can sit beside him. Technically, he supposes, he could just sit down without waiting and let Zayn’s legs pass through him, but that seems sort of rude to just do uninvited. “He’s having me come in to help out a few days a week. I mean, it’s nothing full time, but it’s still -- it’s great. Thank you, really.”
“‘S’nothing,” Zayn says, smiling down at his comic.
“Who’s Waliyha, though?” Liam asks, because he’s been wondering the whole walk home. Zayn glances up at him, and the expression on his face is new -- sort of guilty, all squirrely like he’s been caught at something.
“Ah, I thought -- you didn’t figure it out?”
“No,” Liam says, feeling as if he must be missing something obvious. “Who’s Waliyha? Or, like, who’s her brother?”
“Um,” Zayn says. “Me?”
“You’re -- oh. Oh.” Liam gets it, now. Also, now Zayn is laughing at him.
“Did you not get that?” he asks between wheezing bursts of laughter.
“Of course not, I wouldn’t have -- if I did --” He drops his head into his hands, shielding his eyes. “Oh god, I’ve exploited my dead friend for personal gain,” he moans. Zayn only laughs harder.
“It’s not exploiting me if I tell you to do it, idiot.”
“It’s still wrong!” Liam protests.
“Says who? I’m the ghost, I’m fine with it, so it’s fine, see?”
“But he seemed so sorry for me, he asked if we were close and I said yes, and he got that look--”
But Zayn cuts him off with a renewed burst of laughter. “Wait, sorry, but. Did you say we were friends, or did you say we were close?”
Liam frowns. “Well I didn’t know we were talking about you, first of all, and he asked if we were close, and I didn’t know the answer, so I just said something like ‘you could call it that.’ I think.”
“Oh, that’s just.” If Zayn wasn’t already dead, Liam’d be concerned he was about to go into some sort of epileptic state from how hard he’s laughing. He’s actually wheezing a bit. “D’you realize what he thought? He probably thought you meant we’d dated.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Liam says. “Zayn! That isn’t funny! The poor man probably thinks I’m your grieving boyfriend, that’s why he offered me a job so quickly.”
“Liam, really, it’s fine,” Zayn tells him, trying to stop himself cackling. His success is mixed. “Honestly, Art’s an idiot, drove me crazy always hanging around our house eating everything and shit, so just consider it him paying me back a favor.”
“But -- but now I owe you,” Liam protests.
“You don’t, don’t be daft. I could help and I wanted to and I did, so just deal with it.” Liam thinks Zayn sounds startlingly like Louis in that moment.
“Alright,” he says eventually. He tries, and his success is mixed as well, but by the time they reach the end of an old Batman movie that’s on television, the guilt’s mostly gone, replaced by the relief he’d originally felt, and something else -- something that feels suspiciously like happiness.
( part 2)