making love to the camera (2/2)
(previous part is here )
It’s different, afterwards. Liam doesn’t touch him any less or sleep in another room, but he’s a little rougher with him, shoves back, thumbs absently at the kingfisher’s wings when he thinks Zayn isn’t watching.
He tries to fix it - kisses him harder in the mornings, whispers apologies into his skin every night, fills the in-between with all the things Liam loves best - but Christmas break comes too soon and he’s shoved onto a train with half a promise on his lips and the memory of Liam’s too-dark eyes.
There are two hours and a hundred and ninety kilometres between them and it’s harder, with the distance, to remember the way Liam’s laughter crumbles into a groan when Zayn bites at his hips.
He lasts until just after midnight on Christmas day, when he squirms all the way off his childhood single and speed dials Liam’s number without a moment’s hesitation.
“Hi,” he breathes, before Liam can say anything at all. His spare hand curls in the blankets. “I miss you to death.”
“Hey,” Liam says, sounding sleepy and vulnerable and so damn happy to hear his voice. “Merry Christmas.”
They shove on Love Actually and do a When Harry Met Sally - “When who met who?” Liam asks, and Zayn can picture his confused frown and wrinkled nose - and only talk every few scenes in soft whispers so their parents don’t hear. The familiarity of this, of Liam’s drowsy commentary and ‘still with me, Malik?’, as they have a dozen times before, presses words that tastes like a you, Liam, all I want for Christmas is you against his tongue.
Zayn wakes up to the sound of Liam yawning in one ear and the noise of his sisters thumping on the door in the other and can’t help but feel so, so at home.
||
(a few hours later, a bouquet of chocolate roses and a note dated three days ago arrive at the door and he thinks, yeah, love actually is all around)
||
He comes home on New Year’s Eve and doesn’t hesitate - can’t, not when Liam’s in that loose Pink Floyd shirt he wears to bed and tight acid wash jeans with Zayn’s paint all over the knees - to cross the room and flutter kisses over his cheekbones. Zayn grins into his birthmark and passes over that notebook overflowing with words, the one calling Liam things like ‘beautiful’ and ‘his utopia’.
Liam reads with his fingers trailing after his eyes, like he wants to memorise the touch of the words as well. There are likely metaphors he doesn’t understand, or more adjectives he’ll accuse Zayn of inventing, but when he looks up there are stars in his eyes.
They’re sharing lazy kisses in their squashy armchair when Harry walks into sight, wearing jeans from Forever 21 and an indecently low v-neck. “You’re not dressed,” he whines, and Zayn whispers ‘you’re wearing too many clothes, Li’ into the shell of his ear. “Aiden’s shouting drinks for the next hour.”
Liam pauses. “Grimshaw or Spencer?”
“Spencer, but Grimshaw’s going to be there.”
He squirms away (squirms down, more like, the bastard) and flashes a sweet smile at a very unimpressed Harry. “Then we’re going to stay in,” he says, “maybe catch Dr No. and order Chinese.”
(“Mongolian,” Zayn corrects, hot into his neck, just for the way Liam laughs into his hair)
“Is it because of November?” Louis yells, “because Aiden swears he didn’t know you two were together.”
“He knew,” Liam mumbles, tongue flickering over the tendons in his neck, “you were all fucked out that day and I held your hand and fed you food while your hands were full. He knew.”
The bathroom door swings open and Niall walks through, but they’re too busy sneaking fingers under waistbands to notice. “They want to stay home and get off,” he teases and, yeah, that’s it.
Louis snorts, flashes them an affectionate look, and adds- “that doesn’t make them any less of a married couple.”
||
There are few things more sacred in this world than the feel of Liam’s bare skin against his own, and Zayn’s still searching for the words to adequately describe the way they fit together.
He’s testing ‘incredible’ on his tongue while Liam’s distracted by the phone call - the Italian restaurant on the corner is the only place that delivers on public holidays, and they’ve spent the past hour bickering over pasta - and wriggles underneath the thick afghan to smear kisses all over his chest.
Liam chokes out a groan when Zayn ghosts over his erection and his fingers move to tangle in his hair, but twine around his wrist, instead. “Keep talking,” Zayn whispers, lips catching on the head of his cock, “we want tortellini instead of penne, remember?”
Liam’s grip on the phone wavers and he looks so unsure, with bright eyes and pink lips, but he nods and only stutters once when Zayn swallows around his head.
Zayn pins his squirming hips to the leather and revels in the way Liam goes boneless as he licks up the shaft, sloppy and loud, moaning against his cock until Liam’s talking in syllables instead of words.
Control always gets Liam hot but Zayn wants to drive him wild so he slacks his lips, loosens his tongue, and does everything he doesn’t expect, until he’s chanting ‘yes yes yes’ in reply to everything he’s asked and trembling all over.
Zayn’s getting desperate, now, like it’s something contagious he catches off Liam’s skin. He fights dirty and swallows him down, moans on the way up, slides his fingers between Liam’s cock and his tongue to toy with his foreskin. As a last resort - when Liam’s flushed and stuttering out a ‘don’t come don’t come, don’t come fuck please don’t come too soon’ - he swirls his slick finger over the inside of Liam’s thighs, glancing over his hole, simultaneously sucking down and pressing in until his first knuckle is engulfed in that sickle-sweet heat-
Liam freezes all over. Unconsciously, it seems (feels, really, when his cock throbs against his lips), he breathes out a ‘yes’ and pulses into his mouth.
All it takes is Liam’s tongue chasing the taste off his lips and fingers wrapped loose around his cock for Zayn to follow suit, coming just as Liam whispers into his mouth.
||
(‘so fucking sexy, darling, I will never get sick of your stupid gorgeous face, the way your lips go all pink, the scratch marks all down my spine, and la petit mort, right, that’s what you wrote about, you are my petit mort and I will adore every second of the afterlife if it’s with you’)
||
Liam only blushes a little when he answers the door and Zayn rewards him with that ridiculous annual countdown he loves so much and a dozen lit candles and mouthfuls of trashy white wine between songs and kisses.
||
It’s early morning and grey out when Zayn wakes up in the new year, to Liam against his chest, no less. He groans out a ‘Li’ and wraps an arm around his shoulders but keeps his eyes closed, crafting an image of him (wet, grinning, hot all over) with his hands instead.
“Morning,” Liam whispers, squirming close to press a kiss to his lips. He tastes like spearmint and smells like the vanilla soap they both use and it wakes him up, forces him to kiss back.
When Zayn flips them over to grind their hips together, Liam makes this helpless noise and adds, “Can you maybe fuck me now?”
He rolls onto his stomach and deliberately spreads his legs, pink cheek pressed to the pillow to watch as Zayn stares. Liam’s eyes are bright and glassy and his lips are swollen like he’s been biting back moans and there are fingerprints of lube all over his hips and he looks like a wreck, before Zayn’s even touched him.
Zayn catches his eye, waits for the slight nod, and eases him back into a kiss as he searches blindly for the lube and condoms on the dresser. With slick fingers, he grazes over the rim and moans a scandalised ‘oh, sweetheart’ under his breath when he feels his stretched hole.
“Hey,” Liam mumbles, like he’s embarrassed, and that’s the absolute last thing Zayn wants him to feel when he tastes so vulnerable. He pulls his fingers away and Liam whines, nudges shamelessly back into the touch until he’s certain Zayn won’t move again. “Maybe we could go bare, too?”
His finger corkscrews inside on its own accord because Liam’s ‘hey I just met you / and this is crazy / but here’s my doctor / so get tested maybe?’ from before break suddenly makes a world of sense, like he’s been planning Zayn’s descent into insanity for weeks now.
Liam settles against the mattress and the rising sun illuminates all the contours of his flexing spine and Zayn thinks, not for the first time, that Liam’s absolutely too perfect for this world.
The head of his cock catches on Liam’s hole and fingers twine in his hair, tugging him sideways for a kiss. “Be gentle with me,” Liam breathes against his lips, and Zayn’s never really been one for egotism, but the sound of his words in Liam’s voice while he’s eager and desperate beneath him is-
fuck
The first thrust in is too slow and feels a little like heaven. Liam whimpers against his lips, laughs out a ‘wow’ and starts grinding back cautiously. It has Zayn flustered and more reverent than he’s willing to admit, pressing fingertip bruises into his ribs and chasing Liam’s moans with his tongue with his thighs bracketing Liam’s hips in a way that makes thrusting redundant but feels the most protective, the most deserving of Liam.
Slow is evidently not enough, because it’s barely a heartbeat later and Liam’s whining, whispering a litany of words that make Zayn’s eyes roll back. He twines his fingers with Liam’s and smears kisses all over his broad shoulders while the kingfisher shines in the morning light. His hips snap forward too fast and there’s too much lube and their kisses are sloppy but it’s perfect, overwhelming, something Zayn never thought he could have.
Liam comes untouched with half of Zayn’s name on his lips, sounding so happy and so desperate and so his. Zayn’s hands automatically roam down his ribs, over his stained chest, wriggling backwards to glance over where his rim tightens sporadically around him.
“Zayn,” Liam moans, grinding backwards and tangling come-stained fingers in his hair, voice desperate and soft, and that’s nearly enough in itself to get him off. “Come on, come for me, come inside me, please, I want you, I want you so bad, I want you all over, I want-”
He comes so hard he blacks out, and blinks back to Liam kissing his neck with a smug grin. Zayn’s hips rotate right against his prostate until the smile gives way to whines and stutters and ‘if you don’t stop I’m going to need another round’.
Carefully, he pulls out and cleans up the worst of the lube, sweat and come with the washcloth Liam left on the corner table and wraps around his trembling, pliant body, determined to keep him warm in this too cold room.
||
The next morning and Liam looks vulnerable, with bed hair and a breathy voice and wide eyes that study Zayn’s like he’s never seen him before. They kiss lazily until Zayn succumbs to the ache in his chest and escapes to the kitchen. He fries up bacon and eggs (greasy and scrambled, the way Liam loves best) and grabs Arkham Asylum #4 from the spare bedroom and a big bottle of cold water, wondering when the fuck he started being included among Liam’s favourite things.
(he doesn’t mind, can’t even pretend to be nonchalant, instead grabbing all of Batman: Year One so they won’t need to get dressed for hours yet)
When he hip-checks through their bedroom door, Liam pokes out of the burrow of blankets and absolutely beams at him, like maybe this is a first for him, too, and Zayn furiously stamps down the shameless stutter in his breath.
||
It’s a week into semester and they’re still insatiable, jerking each other off between lessons, fucking in their morning shower, falling asleep with come streaking their chests. They’re snogging in bed and Zayn’s learning how to be shameless, grinding against his hip in response to Liam’s filthy mouth when-
“Liam!” Harry yelps and storms into their bedroom with Niall and Louis and a laptop. Zayn scatters playful kisses all over his neck, desperate to return to want you to fuck me, Zayn, I want your cock and I want your come but stops when Liam’s hand grips his too hard under the covers.
Big brown eyes meet his and sour nerves churn in his stomach. “The first question,” Liam says, and lips swear it will all be okay, “should be why you three were watching porn together in the first place.”
||
“It’s just for Mace,” Liam explains, while the others sprawl all over him and shove the laptop at Zayn. The screen is frozen fifteen minutes in on him and another boy (who’s all torso and stubble and a dirty smile) grinding against the wall and he can’t stop staring at the hand fisted in the knot of unfamiliar, messy curls on Liam’s head. “He couldn’t afford a med degree, so-”
Niall raises an eyebrow and Louis makes an obscene hand gesture behind him. “So you went gay for pay?”
“No,” Liam says, and he’s rhythmically squeezing Zayn’s fingers under the blankets like he wants to code the words into his blood. “The studio doesn’t really stand for that - we actually-”
Used to fuck, Zayn thinks, if the blush high in his cheeks is anything to judge by, and wonders not for the first time if Liam’s ever had something real. He smiles at the worried crease in Liam’s forehead and holds his hand tight while the boys rib on his oh-face, even when they graduate to increasingly crude questions about their sex life.
(even when Liam doesn’t quite meet his eye on some of the answers)
||
Liam crawls into bed that night in a pair of sweatpants and automatically bends around Zayn’s aching body. “Please don’t watch it,” he whispers into the nape of his neck. “It’s irrelevant. And I can’t even say that without thinking how proud you’d be that I can use ‘irrelevant’ in context. There’s a you now. There’s a you and me now.”
And hours later, when he thinks Zayn’s asleep, he adds- “please still be here in the morning.”
||
(he watches the video.
It’s not the way they fuck or the noises Liam makes or even the way they fit together. No, it’s the in-between - the cheeky kisses that turn desperate, the familiarity of Mason’s hands on his chest, the look in Liam’s eyes and the ‘you’re so fucking sexy’ on his lips - which twist around his lungs like smoke on a cold morning.
But he also waits for Liam to wake up before climbing into the shower, just for the relieved smile pressed to the crook of his spine)
||
It’s a little awkward the morning but Liam surprises him that afternoon, walks into his class and plants a coffee on the table and a hard kiss to his lips, and the world tilts back into perspective.
And, sure, there are doubt fuelled comparisons and some frankly abhorrent teasing (his least favourite being Louis’ hollers of ‘choke on that cock, Spike Townsend’ while they’re sucking each other off), but there’s also this new honesty when Liam talks about Wolverhampton, these casual touches in public which threaten to burn him out, and the reassurance that at least what they have is different.
So when Friday comes and Liam looks almost hesitant, in sweats and downcast eyes and hunched shoulders, Zayn just smiles his best and kisses the curve of his shoulder. “Drink for every time a superhero says ‘justice’?” he suggests, knocking over the stack of movies by their feet in his haste to suck at the tendons in his neck.
Liam twists his head to bite his shoulder and adds, “maybe a kiss for every mention of revenge?” and later during Superman they find any excuse to call out the villain and press their lips together.
||
“Hey,” Liam whispers, shy, into his chest, as the end credits of X-Men First Class roll over the screen. “You awake?”
Zayn’s heart aches at the vulnerable hilt in his voice and he’s not certain Liam wants him to hear, so he hums sleepily, tightens the arm curled around Liam’s waist.
“New year’s day,” he says, and Zayn thinks of be gentle with me when lips catch on his collarbone tattoo. “That was a first, for me.”
He waits until Liam’s heartbeat slows against his own and presses a kiss to the crown of his head and promises ‘you’re a first, for me’ when Liam’s honest eyes catch his in the darkness.
||
Liam makes him shout (and scream, and beg, and gasp, and maybe cry a little from the combination of the four) sometime in February, with his tongue circling his hole for the very first time and a finger flirting with his prostate and absolutely no attention to his erection, even when he whines ‘I’ll make it so good I’ll take you apart and put you back together with my cock if you just touch me’.
He comes with filth on his lips, arching off the bed with a shout that will warrant some teasing when they leave this haven of a room. His skin feels electric and he thinks he could maybe come again from the way Liam’s moaning breathless into his inner thigh, still dressed in a suit with the buttons undone to his chest and cuffs shoved up to his elbows.
Zayn just wants to ruin him so he scratches at his exposed shoulders, curls his toes against Liam’s thighs. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you,” he says, voice still husky, a little thrilled at the helpless look in Liam’s eyes. “Riding me, with my hands on your hips, so you can pretend you’re in charge and know you’re not? Or maybe with you all tied up and forced to just relax, baby, you don’t need a perfect record and cufflinks to impress me when I’m gone for you already. Look at you, so made for me, Liam, you’re so made for my cock-”
Kisses are scattered over the soft skin behind his knee but Zayn doesn’t think it’s cognizant, if the bright, disbelieving focus of Liam’s eyes are anything to judge by. He looks a little in awe but Zayn wants him wrecked, wrecked in the cheeks and wrecked for other boys, so he adds-
“Or I could take you out, somewhere in the city, and steal us a bathroom in some busy as fuck restaurant, just enough privacy to keep you to myself but so, so little that people blush when we leave, and you would sit there all night with my come inside you, love bites all over your neck, your stupid oxford buttoned wrong. Or maybe we wouldn’t last that long, and I would tug you into my lap on the tube and you’d beg for it in time with the track movements, with all those people watching, thinking of how desperate you must be for me-”
Liam comes with wide eyes and a ‘jesus christ Zayn’, lurching up to kiss him like it’s the only thing he wants. “Yeah,” he breathes, and Zayn wants to spend the rest of the day deciphering what he’s referring to.
He drags himself out of bed and to the library twenty minutes later, but French liberalism is the last thing on his mind. His thoughts keep straying to ‘yeah’ and ‘can you maybe fuck me now?’ and ‘I’m going to get you loud’. By the time he finishes the essay, it’s dark out and he’s hard and wanting and on the right side of desperate for Liam and his pretty mouth.
Zayn sees him a moment too late, one foot in the door and his mind in the gutter when he recognises the lazy smile and blue eyes and tight muscles along his shoulders. An ache rides down his spine and he automatically mutates into that facade when Mason rights himself and smiles at him.
Footsteps echo down the hall and Liam appears in the doorway, grinning once he sees Zayn. “Hey you,” he says, soft and happy and so sure. “Mace, this is-”
“Just Zayn,” Mason finishes, a little mocking, like he’s pleased he’s witnessing this. “Gathered. Pleasure.”
Zayn just raises an eyebrow and says ‘all mine’ under his breath, forcing disinterest into all his cells when what he really wants is to pry him apart, ask him a dozen questions starting with ‘how serious were you two?’ and ending with ‘have you fucked since I’ve been sleeping in his bed?’
They talk over tea and biscuits but Zayn doesn’t quite hear anything, too busy staring at Mason’s arm tight around Liam’s shoulders with fingers catching on the love bite he left just hours ago.
“Really,” he’s saying, more to Liam than Zayn, “I deserve an Order of the British Empire for saving Lee-”
(which is maybe his sixth least favourite thing about Mason, where first is the fact that he had Liam before him, third is the peak of flawless muscles under his shirt, fifth is his eight hundred inside jokes about their sex life and the porn industry, and sixth is that he calls him ‘Lee’ when it is clearly ‘Li’)
“-he was one ripped t-shirt from an eternity of repressed homosexuality and douchebaggery.”
Zayn makes a bored little hum which he hopes summarises ‘Liam is capable of making his own decisions, see, he chose me’ in the same, detached manner he uses in class, and Liam smiles like he sees right through all his bullshit.
“I was not that bad,” he grumbles, holding Zayn’s eye for a moment too long before prodding feebly at Mason’s ribs. “Please leave before you ruin my good reputation.”
Mason slides off the couch and grins at Zayn, curiosity sharpening his eyes. He’s halfway to the door and the chill in the room is already seeping through the cracks in the floorboards when he turns around and asks, “hey, forgot, did you want the car to pick you up this weekend?”
Liam freezes. “What are we doing this weekend?”
“Filming,” Mason says, carefully, watching Zayn instead. “Remember, Christmas break, your backyard swing, leaning on the bottle of whisky to sign the contract for the third scene?”
(as in two already, as in another video Harry didn’t find, another twenty-five minutes of them fucking for the world to see)
Blushing, Liam twists towards Zayn. “We’re-” he says, leaving a deliberate pause for another definition.
Zayn feels sick, like he’s upside down and half off a cliff and all alone and he doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know how to word ‘hey no I thought we were over this I thought you were all mine I thought I didn’t need to say a thing’ in front of Liam’s carbon copy with a nice cock and a vivacious laugh. Instead, he just swallows thickly and says, “not a big deal, right?”
Liam just stares at him and Zayn knows, he knows this is when he’s supposed to kiss him silly and say no and pull a promise ring out of absolute nowhere. Now
now
now.
“Get the car to pick me up Sunday, then,” he says, gentle, and slams the bathroom door behind him once he leaves.
||
(big deal, right, he realises three hours later, when he can’t stop thinking about Mason’s strong hands all over Liam, but he doesn’t shake him awake, just pinches the macaw until it turns the skin underneath an ugly red and he stops feeling the urge to cry)
||
He scribbles out a note (Tonight - Z x) and sneaks out just after dawn while Liam’s curled in on himself, just so he won’t need to wake up to an empty bed. The day passes with this consistent vice wrapped around all his essential organs and even his favourite places in the city - Bookmarks in the morning, Hyde Park for the afternoon, Lazarides before dinner - aren’t enough to distract from the thought of Liam all over another guy.
Admittedly, he’s half-insane by sunset. Liam cocks an eyebrow and says ‘ready for this?’ like he’s a challenge or a prize or maybe both, and Zayn shoves him onto his stomach, uses too little lube and takes what he needs and leaves what he wants. Hickeys and scratch marks and bruises stain all those intimate places he loves best-
(the nape of his neck, the inside of his thighs, the curve of his wrist where the kingfisher’s beak touches bone)
- and he can’t help but feel a little ill, when he realises he’s resulted to animalistic possessiveness as his primary method of telling the world that Liam’s his.
||
(Stretched out afterwards, in the dark and sharing desperate kisses, Zayn succumbs to his rabbit heartbeat and whispers, “why do you add milk?”
It’s not the right thing to say, if the sick, acrid taste of guilt is anything to judge by. Liam doesn’t speak, just tightens an arm around his shoulders and kisses him. It leaves him breathless and desperate and heavy with something disarming-
like love, he thinks, though he’ll never admit it
- that feels like an answer.)
||
Arrogance studios film in an apartment off Hyde Park. It’s airy and minimalist and Zayn would absolutely adore it if he hadn’t seen Mason deepthroating Liam on the sofa, laughing ‘giddy up pony boy’ with his back arched over the kitchen table, even just slouched in the doorway with that stupid smirk on his face.
“You brought Zayn,” he says, pressing (just a fraction) into Liam’s space until Zayn can see the freckles sprinkled over his cheeks. “Is that a suggestion?”
“No threeways!” a man yells from across the room, “your wholesome we-only-fuck-each-other trilogy only lasts another four hours, and then you can engage in all the sordid activities you love best.”
Mason wriggles fingers under Liam’s waistband and Zayn slaps them away. “I don’t know, Henry,” he laughs, “some of the things we’re about to do are pretty obscene. Ready to start, Lee? I bet I can get you hard before we even strip off.”
Scowling, Zayn tugs Liam close by his shirt. In another world, likely one where he didn’t feel so defenceless, he would bite his neck, outline his cock, get him hard and needy, just for Zayn. Instead, he wraps his fingers around Liam’s bruised wrist, kisses the flinch off his cheeks.
Liam looks torn and so unfamiliar, and comes close in front of a room of production workers. “Louis will be here soon,” he says, into his hair, sounding incredibly wide open. “A kiss for good luck?”
Zayn complies, just slow enough to make Liam whine against his lips, and mumbles ‘I’m sorry’ into his mouth.
Teeth bite into his lip, just once, and Liam’s fingers fist in his hair. “Hey,” he whispers, between kisses. “Remember that first day, with the furniture?”
Zayn makes this helpless noise he hopes summarises easy smile, bare forearms, ‘you pull it off’ in a breath.
“You probably didn’t think anything of it,” Liam continues, sounding mortified and affectionate and so, so nervous, “but when I was fixing tea afterwards, you said you were absolutely unaffected by everything but black coffee. I always add milk because I want to be what affects you. And I like being the only one to get your heart racing. And I sort of love getting to calm you down, too.”
With one last kiss, before Zayn can reply, he crawls onto the bed and settles in the crook of Mason’s arm, turning towards the camera with an easy smile.
Zayn doesn’t listen to the obligatory foreplay conversation, only catches-
(“that’s new,” Mason says, tracing the kingfisher’s wings as Liam’s eyes involuntarily meet his across the bright room)
and
(Liam’s fingers catching on muscle groups Zayn didn’t know existed, flirting about how he’s going to ‘fuck you into shape, Mace, your gluts should be dedicated to me’)
and
(“I blew Liam under one of the desks at our high school,” he says, struggling to unbutton Liam’s skin-tight jeans with his mouth pressed to his crotch, “so he’s solely responsible for my steady decline into exhibitionism”)
between the white noise.
There are things Zayn can take and others he can’t, and while listening to Liam moan around a cock is bearable, he refuses to actually watch. Instead, he wedges himself between a row of screens and behind a cameraman and watches a lanky guy edit old footage.
He’s captivated by the sight of a younger Liam (no tattoo, all-American haircut, wearing plaid like he’s still a little unsure of his own body) doing sit-ups with Mason rewarding him with a kiss after every rep when the editor turns to flash him a smile. “You’re the boyfriend, right?” he says, and Zayn’s a little helpless at how much he enjoys the definition.
He nods and the editor passes him a set of headphones. On screen, they’re rolling around in bed and trading hot kisses and groaning like pulling away is the worst thing in the world whenever the cameraman asks them a question.
“Legal,” Liam answers, cheeky, with hair in his face and lips sucking at his neck.
Mason glances up at him, then, and Zayn’s so struck with how similar they look (what, with the muscles and the smiles and the misplaced innocence). “Barely,” he adds, “and we definitely weren’t that one time in sixth form in the stairwell-”
The next kiss catches him by surprise and he makes an indignant noise like he wants to keep talking but loses himself in Liam’s lips, instead.
The scene changes to the two of them in the shower, lathering each other up and trading cheesy pick up lines and rewarding strokes whenever one earns a laugh, and Zayn needs to look away at ‘you’re the only ten-I-see’.
Again and they’re blowing each other while everyone’s on break, another and they’re shoving themselves apart so they don’t come too soon, and then they’re on the couch as they talk about sex and ‘Mace, your hole is so sensitive, I bet you could come from being rimmed alone’ and ‘that sounds like an offer’.
He glances up from the screen and Liam has him spread across the bed, a hand fisted in his hair and the other wrenching his thighs apart. His hips roll just a little too short (like Zayn would, like Zayn did, only a few days ago in the morning light) and Mason writhes, arches, laughs ‘get the fuck off my prostate’, and Zayn’s entranced by this other side of Liam who shoves back, and he can’t-
||
(can’t stay quiet or sit still or pretend he doesn’t care that Liam’s sharing all their secrets with the rest of the world)
||
Louis finds him a cigarette later in one of the spare bedrooms with the window propped open to remove the dry smell of smoke and sex from the air. He’s absolutely nothing like Niall was that day in the fire escape, all calm and understanding and blonde hair and easy camaraderie. Instead, he climbs into Zayn’s lap and says, “wonder how many guys have sweated over this futon?”
“Lou,” he scowls, blushing into his neck, and he’s certain it’s a distraction tactic because a moment later he adds, “there are two great tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.”
He’s silent, for a moment, and then he snorts. “That’s from One Tree Hill.”
“Actually, it’s George Bernard Shaw-”
“Also it’s total bullshit,” he says, before Zayn can really discuss the merits of Irish dramatism. “Is your least favourite part of the day waking up beside him? Are your stupid bird tattoos the ugliest thing you’ve ever inked into your skin? Is having a boy that gone for you really the worst thing to ever happen to you?”
The memory of Liam leaning over his essay, lips catching over ‘discernible’, clears his lungs better than the nicotine. “He’s not really gone for me anymore, though.”
Louis sighs in that awfully put-upon way. “I drove to Wolverhampton during Christmas break because of your inability to talk about your feelings outside of pretentious prose,” he says, quiet in the acoustic-heavy room, “and Liam had more alcohol in his blood than oxygen, and kept saying ‘I’m his just, but I’m still just his’. You’ve spent the past two days moping and this is getting ridiculous because you’re actually a Beatles song. And none of that I want to hold your hand, bullshit, I’m talking when I’m sixty-four sugar-coated kisses, joint custody over a puppy and a silver wedding anniversary before you’re forty.”
He can’t quite stop thinking of Liam for another twenty-five years, just like this, so he nearly misses when Louis shoots him a triumphant smile and adds-
“Now, go on. Go get your damn tragedy, you shameless post-modernist stereotype.”
||
He hovers in the doorway and watches as Liam licks the come off Mason’s chest and presses it between his lips with his tongue. They kiss a little longer than necessary and whisper things no one else is supposed to hear as the camera pans over their chests pressed together, Mason’s arms slotted around his neck, the lazy tangle of his legs around Liam’s waist.
When they separate, someone holding a mic wolf-whistles and Liam fumbles a sheet around his waist to cover the flush of his chest. He meets Zayn’s eyes across the crowded room and leads him wordlessly into the second bathroom, the one without the studio lights, and strips Zayn off with that economic precision he usually reserves for himself.
The water is still cold when they slip under the rainfall showerhead. Goosebumps spread across Liam’s shoulders and Zayn focuses there, kisses the nape of his neck while hands scrape all the lube and sweat off his chest.
“That first day,” Liam says, a little broken, “in the hall, you- you thought you had everyone fooled. You wore those stupid boots and talked about Hemingway over dinner and I can remember thinking wow, I can’t wait to take this boy apart.”
They’re trembling, now, and Zayn can’t help but think that he was so, so right when he called Liam spring, unpredictable and golden in any light. He scrapes his teeth over a broad shoulder and waits while the hot water stings their bare skin.
Liam dances fingertips over his forearm, spelling out ‘hello’ and ‘I miss you’ and ‘tomorrow’. “You spent this whole weekend trying to trick me with syllable answers,” he whispers. “I just want you to know that it didn’t work. It didn’t work today and it won’t work tomorrow and it will never work, because I know you. I know you’ll compromise on the coffee now you know why, and I know you used to sneak out before dawn to brush your teeth so we could kiss in the morning, and I know how long it takes for you to get irritated when we’re out for too long, and I know how you look when you laugh ironically, and I know you’re just as obscenely infatuated with me as I am with you.”
The door creaks open and Louis and Mason shoving an ipod dock onto the counter with that kind of manic glee that foreshadows doom in their apartment. The Righteous Brothers play and Liam blushes, throwing a bar of soap at the speaker to switch to Maroon 5.
Liam twists to face him and his lips are swollen, and there are bruises Zayn didn’t leave all over his chest and an unknown intensity in his eyes. “I wanted you to hurt, today,” Liam whispers. “And I’m not going to apologise for that, yet. I wanted you to see that we’re something people write sonnets about. We’re not a neutral. We’re a spectrum. And if you could please tell me - and not in Eliot or fucking Austen, just be real for me-”
“You’re real, to me,” he says, just for the way Liam’s water-stained lips curl into a grin, “and I would write you sonnets if they weren’t-”
“Conformist and the cyanide of the creative mind,” he finishes, sounding so incredibly fond. “I listen, you know that.”
And then, quieter, when they’re brushing their lips together sweetly and Liam’s whimpering in some kind of masochistic pleasure, Zayn adds ‘I have three rules and I broke them all for you’ because Zayn’s always loved spring, and now he loves Liam, too.
||
(they go on their very first date a week later on Valentine’s Day. Liam buys him a bouquet of roses and Zayn holds his hand over dinner and they snog in the back row during Flight, and it feels a little like a new beginning when they whisper a synchronised ‘I love you’ as they kiss goodnight on their doorstep)
It’s different, afterwards. Liam doesn’t touch him any less or sleep in another room, but he’s a little rougher with him, shoves back, thumbs absently at the kingfisher’s wings when he thinks Zayn isn’t watching.
He tries to fix it - kisses him harder in the mornings, whispers apologies into his skin every night, fills the in-between with all the things Liam loves best - but Christmas break comes too soon and he’s shoved onto a train with half a promise on his lips and the memory of Liam’s too-dark eyes.
There are two hours and a hundred and ninety kilometres between them and it’s harder, with the distance, to remember the way Liam’s laughter crumbles into a groan when Zayn bites at his hips.
He lasts until just after midnight on Christmas day, when he squirms all the way off his childhood single and speed dials Liam’s number without a moment’s hesitation.
“Hi,” he breathes, before Liam can say anything at all. His spare hand curls in the blankets. “I miss you to death.”
“Hey,” Liam says, sounding sleepy and vulnerable and so damn happy to hear his voice. “Merry Christmas.”
They shove on Love Actually and do a When Harry Met Sally - “When who met who?” Liam asks, and Zayn can picture his confused frown and wrinkled nose - and only talk every few scenes in soft whispers so their parents don’t hear. The familiarity of this, of Liam’s drowsy commentary and ‘still with me, Malik?’, as they have a dozen times before, presses words that tastes like a you, Liam, all I want for Christmas is you against his tongue.
Zayn wakes up to the sound of Liam yawning in one ear and the noise of his sisters thumping on the door in the other and can’t help but feel so, so at home.
||
(a few hours later, a bouquet of chocolate roses and a note dated three days ago arrive at the door and he thinks, yeah, love actually is all around)
||
He comes home on New Year’s Eve and doesn’t hesitate - can’t, not when Liam’s in that loose Pink Floyd shirt he wears to bed and tight acid wash jeans with Zayn’s paint all over the knees - to cross the room and flutter kisses over his cheekbones. Zayn grins into his birthmark and passes over that notebook overflowing with words, the one calling Liam things like ‘beautiful’ and ‘his utopia’.
Liam reads with his fingers trailing after his eyes, like he wants to memorise the touch of the words as well. There are likely metaphors he doesn’t understand, or more adjectives he’ll accuse Zayn of inventing, but when he looks up there are stars in his eyes.
They’re sharing lazy kisses in their squashy armchair when Harry walks into sight, wearing jeans from Forever 21 and an indecently low v-neck. “You’re not dressed,” he whines, and Zayn whispers ‘you’re wearing too many clothes, Li’ into the shell of his ear. “Aiden’s shouting drinks for the next hour.”
Liam pauses. “Grimshaw or Spencer?”
“Spencer, but Grimshaw’s going to be there.”
He squirms away (squirms down, more like, the bastard) and flashes a sweet smile at a very unimpressed Harry. “Then we’re going to stay in,” he says, “maybe catch Dr No. and order Chinese.”
(“Mongolian,” Zayn corrects, hot into his neck, just for the way Liam laughs into his hair)
“Is it because of November?” Louis yells, “because Aiden swears he didn’t know you two were together.”
“He knew,” Liam mumbles, tongue flickering over the tendons in his neck, “you were all fucked out that day and I held your hand and fed you food while your hands were full. He knew.”
The bathroom door swings open and Niall walks through, but they’re too busy sneaking fingers under waistbands to notice. “They want to stay home and get off,” he teases and, yeah, that’s it.
Louis snorts, flashes them an affectionate look, and adds- “that doesn’t make them any less of a married couple.”
||
There are few things more sacred in this world than the feel of Liam’s bare skin against his own, and Zayn’s still searching for the words to adequately describe the way they fit together.
He’s testing ‘incredible’ on his tongue while Liam’s distracted by the phone call - the Italian restaurant on the corner is the only place that delivers on public holidays, and they’ve spent the past hour bickering over pasta - and wriggles underneath the thick afghan to smear kisses all over his chest.
Liam chokes out a groan when Zayn ghosts over his erection and his fingers move to tangle in his hair, but twine around his wrist, instead. “Keep talking,” Zayn whispers, lips catching on the head of his cock, “we want tortellini instead of penne, remember?”
Liam’s grip on the phone wavers and he looks so unsure, with bright eyes and pink lips, but he nods and only stutters once when Zayn swallows around his head.
Zayn pins his squirming hips to the leather and revels in the way Liam goes boneless as he licks up the shaft, sloppy and loud, moaning against his cock until Liam’s talking in syllables instead of words.
Control always gets Liam hot but Zayn wants to drive him wild so he slacks his lips, loosens his tongue, and does everything he doesn’t expect, until he’s chanting ‘yes yes yes’ in reply to everything he’s asked and trembling all over.
Zayn’s getting desperate, now, like it’s something contagious he catches off Liam’s skin. He fights dirty and swallows him down, moans on the way up, slides his fingers between Liam’s cock and his tongue to toy with his foreskin. As a last resort - when Liam’s flushed and stuttering out a ‘don’t come don’t come, don’t come fuck please don’t come too soon’ - he swirls his slick finger over the inside of Liam’s thighs, glancing over his hole, simultaneously sucking down and pressing in until his first knuckle is engulfed in that sickle-sweet heat-
Liam freezes all over. Unconsciously, it seems (feels, really, when his cock throbs against his lips), he breathes out a ‘yes’ and pulses into his mouth.
All it takes is Liam’s tongue chasing the taste off his lips and fingers wrapped loose around his cock for Zayn to follow suit, coming just as Liam whispers into his mouth.
||
(‘so fucking sexy, darling, I will never get sick of your stupid gorgeous face, the way your lips go all pink, the scratch marks all down my spine, and la petit mort, right, that’s what you wrote about, you are my petit mort and I will adore every second of the afterlife if it’s with you’)
||
Liam only blushes a little when he answers the door and Zayn rewards him with that ridiculous annual countdown he loves so much and a dozen lit candles and mouthfuls of trashy white wine between songs and kisses.
||
It’s early morning and grey out when Zayn wakes up in the new year, to Liam against his chest, no less. He groans out a ‘Li’ and wraps an arm around his shoulders but keeps his eyes closed, crafting an image of him (wet, grinning, hot all over) with his hands instead.
“Morning,” Liam whispers, squirming close to press a kiss to his lips. He tastes like spearmint and smells like the vanilla soap they both use and it wakes him up, forces him to kiss back.
When Zayn flips them over to grind their hips together, Liam makes this helpless noise and adds, “Can you maybe fuck me now?”
He rolls onto his stomach and deliberately spreads his legs, pink cheek pressed to the pillow to watch as Zayn stares. Liam’s eyes are bright and glassy and his lips are swollen like he’s been biting back moans and there are fingerprints of lube all over his hips and he looks like a wreck, before Zayn’s even touched him.
Zayn catches his eye, waits for the slight nod, and eases him back into a kiss as he searches blindly for the lube and condoms on the dresser. With slick fingers, he grazes over the rim and moans a scandalised ‘oh, sweetheart’ under his breath when he feels his stretched hole.
“Hey,” Liam mumbles, like he’s embarrassed, and that’s the absolute last thing Zayn wants him to feel when he tastes so vulnerable. He pulls his fingers away and Liam whines, nudges shamelessly back into the touch until he’s certain Zayn won’t move again. “Maybe we could go bare, too?”
His finger corkscrews inside on its own accord because Liam’s ‘hey I just met you / and this is crazy / but here’s my doctor / so get tested maybe?’ from before break suddenly makes a world of sense, like he’s been planning Zayn’s descent into insanity for weeks now.
Liam settles against the mattress and the rising sun illuminates all the contours of his flexing spine and Zayn thinks, not for the first time, that Liam’s absolutely too perfect for this world.
The head of his cock catches on Liam’s hole and fingers twine in his hair, tugging him sideways for a kiss. “Be gentle with me,” Liam breathes against his lips, and Zayn’s never really been one for egotism, but the sound of his words in Liam’s voice while he’s eager and desperate beneath him is-
fuck
The first thrust in is too slow and feels a little like heaven. Liam whimpers against his lips, laughs out a ‘wow’ and starts grinding back cautiously. It has Zayn flustered and more reverent than he’s willing to admit, pressing fingertip bruises into his ribs and chasing Liam’s moans with his tongue with his thighs bracketing Liam’s hips in a way that makes thrusting redundant but feels the most protective, the most deserving of Liam.
Slow is evidently not enough, because it’s barely a heartbeat later and Liam’s whining, whispering a litany of words that make Zayn’s eyes roll back. He twines his fingers with Liam’s and smears kisses all over his broad shoulders while the kingfisher shines in the morning light. His hips snap forward too fast and there’s too much lube and their kisses are sloppy but it’s perfect, overwhelming, something Zayn never thought he could have.
Liam comes untouched with half of Zayn’s name on his lips, sounding so happy and so desperate and so his. Zayn’s hands automatically roam down his ribs, over his stained chest, wriggling backwards to glance over where his rim tightens sporadically around him.
“Zayn,” Liam moans, grinding backwards and tangling come-stained fingers in his hair, voice desperate and soft, and that’s nearly enough in itself to get him off. “Come on, come for me, come inside me, please, I want you, I want you so bad, I want you all over, I want-”
He comes so hard he blacks out, and blinks back to Liam kissing his neck with a smug grin. Zayn’s hips rotate right against his prostate until the smile gives way to whines and stutters and ‘if you don’t stop I’m going to need another round’.
Carefully, he pulls out and cleans up the worst of the lube, sweat and come with the washcloth Liam left on the corner table and wraps around his trembling, pliant body, determined to keep him warm in this too cold room.
||
The next morning and Liam looks vulnerable, with bed hair and a breathy voice and wide eyes that study Zayn’s like he’s never seen him before. They kiss lazily until Zayn succumbs to the ache in his chest and escapes to the kitchen. He fries up bacon and eggs (greasy and scrambled, the way Liam loves best) and grabs Arkham Asylum #4 from the spare bedroom and a big bottle of cold water, wondering when the fuck he started being included among Liam’s favourite things.
(he doesn’t mind, can’t even pretend to be nonchalant, instead grabbing all of Batman: Year One so they won’t need to get dressed for hours yet)
When he hip-checks through their bedroom door, Liam pokes out of the burrow of blankets and absolutely beams at him, like maybe this is a first for him, too, and Zayn furiously stamps down the shameless stutter in his breath.
||
It’s a week into semester and they’re still insatiable, jerking each other off between lessons, fucking in their morning shower, falling asleep with come streaking their chests. They’re snogging in bed and Zayn’s learning how to be shameless, grinding against his hip in response to Liam’s filthy mouth when-
“Liam!” Harry yelps and storms into their bedroom with Niall and Louis and a laptop. Zayn scatters playful kisses all over his neck, desperate to return to want you to fuck me, Zayn, I want your cock and I want your come but stops when Liam’s hand grips his too hard under the covers.
Big brown eyes meet his and sour nerves churn in his stomach. “The first question,” Liam says, and lips swear it will all be okay, “should be why you three were watching porn together in the first place.”
||
“It’s just for Mace,” Liam explains, while the others sprawl all over him and shove the laptop at Zayn. The screen is frozen fifteen minutes in on him and another boy (who’s all torso and stubble and a dirty smile) grinding against the wall and he can’t stop staring at the hand fisted in the knot of unfamiliar, messy curls on Liam’s head. “He couldn’t afford a med degree, so-”
Niall raises an eyebrow and Louis makes an obscene hand gesture behind him. “So you went gay for pay?”
“No,” Liam says, and he’s rhythmically squeezing Zayn’s fingers under the blankets like he wants to code the words into his blood. “The studio doesn’t really stand for that - we actually-”
Used to fuck, Zayn thinks, if the blush high in his cheeks is anything to judge by, and wonders not for the first time if Liam’s ever had something real. He smiles at the worried crease in Liam’s forehead and holds his hand tight while the boys rib on his oh-face, even when they graduate to increasingly crude questions about their sex life.
(even when Liam doesn’t quite meet his eye on some of the answers)
||
Liam crawls into bed that night in a pair of sweatpants and automatically bends around Zayn’s aching body. “Please don’t watch it,” he whispers into the nape of his neck. “It’s irrelevant. And I can’t even say that without thinking how proud you’d be that I can use ‘irrelevant’ in context. There’s a you now. There’s a you and me now.”
And hours later, when he thinks Zayn’s asleep, he adds- “please still be here in the morning.”
||
(he watches the video.
It’s not the way they fuck or the noises Liam makes or even the way they fit together. No, it’s the in-between - the cheeky kisses that turn desperate, the familiarity of Mason’s hands on his chest, the look in Liam’s eyes and the ‘you’re so fucking sexy’ on his lips - which twist around his lungs like smoke on a cold morning.
But he also waits for Liam to wake up before climbing into the shower, just for the relieved smile pressed to the crook of his spine)
||
It’s a little awkward the morning but Liam surprises him that afternoon, walks into his class and plants a coffee on the table and a hard kiss to his lips, and the world tilts back into perspective.
And, sure, there are doubt fuelled comparisons and some frankly abhorrent teasing (his least favourite being Louis’ hollers of ‘choke on that cock, Spike Townsend’ while they’re sucking each other off), but there’s also this new honesty when Liam talks about Wolverhampton, these casual touches in public which threaten to burn him out, and the reassurance that at least what they have is different.
So when Friday comes and Liam looks almost hesitant, in sweats and downcast eyes and hunched shoulders, Zayn just smiles his best and kisses the curve of his shoulder. “Drink for every time a superhero says ‘justice’?” he suggests, knocking over the stack of movies by their feet in his haste to suck at the tendons in his neck.
Liam twists his head to bite his shoulder and adds, “maybe a kiss for every mention of revenge?” and later during Superman they find any excuse to call out the villain and press their lips together.
||
“Hey,” Liam whispers, shy, into his chest, as the end credits of X-Men First Class roll over the screen. “You awake?”
Zayn’s heart aches at the vulnerable hilt in his voice and he’s not certain Liam wants him to hear, so he hums sleepily, tightens the arm curled around Liam’s waist.
“New year’s day,” he says, and Zayn thinks of be gentle with me when lips catch on his collarbone tattoo. “That was a first, for me.”
He waits until Liam’s heartbeat slows against his own and presses a kiss to the crown of his head and promises ‘you’re a first, for me’ when Liam’s honest eyes catch his in the darkness.
||
Liam makes him shout (and scream, and beg, and gasp, and maybe cry a little from the combination of the four) sometime in February, with his tongue circling his hole for the very first time and a finger flirting with his prostate and absolutely no attention to his erection, even when he whines ‘I’ll make it so good I’ll take you apart and put you back together with my cock if you just touch me’.
He comes with filth on his lips, arching off the bed with a shout that will warrant some teasing when they leave this haven of a room. His skin feels electric and he thinks he could maybe come again from the way Liam’s moaning breathless into his inner thigh, still dressed in a suit with the buttons undone to his chest and cuffs shoved up to his elbows.
Zayn just wants to ruin him so he scratches at his exposed shoulders, curls his toes against Liam’s thighs. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you,” he says, voice still husky, a little thrilled at the helpless look in Liam’s eyes. “Riding me, with my hands on your hips, so you can pretend you’re in charge and know you’re not? Or maybe with you all tied up and forced to just relax, baby, you don’t need a perfect record and cufflinks to impress me when I’m gone for you already. Look at you, so made for me, Liam, you’re so made for my cock-”
Kisses are scattered over the soft skin behind his knee but Zayn doesn’t think it’s cognizant, if the bright, disbelieving focus of Liam’s eyes are anything to judge by. He looks a little in awe but Zayn wants him wrecked, wrecked in the cheeks and wrecked for other boys, so he adds-
“Or I could take you out, somewhere in the city, and steal us a bathroom in some busy as fuck restaurant, just enough privacy to keep you to myself but so, so little that people blush when we leave, and you would sit there all night with my come inside you, love bites all over your neck, your stupid oxford buttoned wrong. Or maybe we wouldn’t last that long, and I would tug you into my lap on the tube and you’d beg for it in time with the track movements, with all those people watching, thinking of how desperate you must be for me-”
Liam comes with wide eyes and a ‘jesus christ Zayn’, lurching up to kiss him like it’s the only thing he wants. “Yeah,” he breathes, and Zayn wants to spend the rest of the day deciphering what he’s referring to.
He drags himself out of bed and to the library twenty minutes later, but French liberalism is the last thing on his mind. His thoughts keep straying to ‘yeah’ and ‘can you maybe fuck me now?’ and ‘I’m going to get you loud’. By the time he finishes the essay, it’s dark out and he’s hard and wanting and on the right side of desperate for Liam and his pretty mouth.
Zayn sees him a moment too late, one foot in the door and his mind in the gutter when he recognises the lazy smile and blue eyes and tight muscles along his shoulders. An ache rides down his spine and he automatically mutates into that facade when Mason rights himself and smiles at him.
Footsteps echo down the hall and Liam appears in the doorway, grinning once he sees Zayn. “Hey you,” he says, soft and happy and so sure. “Mace, this is-”
“Just Zayn,” Mason finishes, a little mocking, like he’s pleased he’s witnessing this. “Gathered. Pleasure.”
Zayn just raises an eyebrow and says ‘all mine’ under his breath, forcing disinterest into all his cells when what he really wants is to pry him apart, ask him a dozen questions starting with ‘how serious were you two?’ and ending with ‘have you fucked since I’ve been sleeping in his bed?’
They talk over tea and biscuits but Zayn doesn’t quite hear anything, too busy staring at Mason’s arm tight around Liam’s shoulders with fingers catching on the love bite he left just hours ago.
“Really,” he’s saying, more to Liam than Zayn, “I deserve an Order of the British Empire for saving Lee-”
(which is maybe his sixth least favourite thing about Mason, where first is the fact that he had Liam before him, third is the peak of flawless muscles under his shirt, fifth is his eight hundred inside jokes about their sex life and the porn industry, and sixth is that he calls him ‘Lee’ when it is clearly ‘Li’)
“-he was one ripped t-shirt from an eternity of repressed homosexuality and douchebaggery.”
Zayn makes a bored little hum which he hopes summarises ‘Liam is capable of making his own decisions, see, he chose me’ in the same, detached manner he uses in class, and Liam smiles like he sees right through all his bullshit.
“I was not that bad,” he grumbles, holding Zayn’s eye for a moment too long before prodding feebly at Mason’s ribs. “Please leave before you ruin my good reputation.”
Mason slides off the couch and grins at Zayn, curiosity sharpening his eyes. He’s halfway to the door and the chill in the room is already seeping through the cracks in the floorboards when he turns around and asks, “hey, forgot, did you want the car to pick you up this weekend?”
Liam freezes. “What are we doing this weekend?”
“Filming,” Mason says, carefully, watching Zayn instead. “Remember, Christmas break, your backyard swing, leaning on the bottle of whisky to sign the contract for the third scene?”
(as in two already, as in another video Harry didn’t find, another twenty-five minutes of them fucking for the world to see)
Blushing, Liam twists towards Zayn. “We’re-” he says, leaving a deliberate pause for another definition.
Zayn feels sick, like he’s upside down and half off a cliff and all alone and he doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know how to word ‘hey no I thought we were over this I thought you were all mine I thought I didn’t need to say a thing’ in front of Liam’s carbon copy with a nice cock and a vivacious laugh. Instead, he just swallows thickly and says, “not a big deal, right?”
Liam just stares at him and Zayn knows, he knows this is when he’s supposed to kiss him silly and say no and pull a promise ring out of absolute nowhere. Now
now
now.
“Get the car to pick me up Sunday, then,” he says, gentle, and slams the bathroom door behind him once he leaves.
||
(big deal, right, he realises three hours later, when he can’t stop thinking about Mason’s strong hands all over Liam, but he doesn’t shake him awake, just pinches the macaw until it turns the skin underneath an ugly red and he stops feeling the urge to cry)
||
He scribbles out a note (Tonight - Z x) and sneaks out just after dawn while Liam’s curled in on himself, just so he won’t need to wake up to an empty bed. The day passes with this consistent vice wrapped around all his essential organs and even his favourite places in the city - Bookmarks in the morning, Hyde Park for the afternoon, Lazarides before dinner - aren’t enough to distract from the thought of Liam all over another guy.
Admittedly, he’s half-insane by sunset. Liam cocks an eyebrow and says ‘ready for this?’ like he’s a challenge or a prize or maybe both, and Zayn shoves him onto his stomach, uses too little lube and takes what he needs and leaves what he wants. Hickeys and scratch marks and bruises stain all those intimate places he loves best-
(the nape of his neck, the inside of his thighs, the curve of his wrist where the kingfisher’s beak touches bone)
- and he can’t help but feel a little ill, when he realises he’s resulted to animalistic possessiveness as his primary method of telling the world that Liam’s his.
||
(Stretched out afterwards, in the dark and sharing desperate kisses, Zayn succumbs to his rabbit heartbeat and whispers, “why do you add milk?”
It’s not the right thing to say, if the sick, acrid taste of guilt is anything to judge by. Liam doesn’t speak, just tightens an arm around his shoulders and kisses him. It leaves him breathless and desperate and heavy with something disarming-
like love, he thinks, though he’ll never admit it
- that feels like an answer.)
||
Arrogance studios film in an apartment off Hyde Park. It’s airy and minimalist and Zayn would absolutely adore it if he hadn’t seen Mason deepthroating Liam on the sofa, laughing ‘giddy up pony boy’ with his back arched over the kitchen table, even just slouched in the doorway with that stupid smirk on his face.
“You brought Zayn,” he says, pressing (just a fraction) into Liam’s space until Zayn can see the freckles sprinkled over his cheeks. “Is that a suggestion?”
“No threeways!” a man yells from across the room, “your wholesome we-only-fuck-each-other trilogy only lasts another four hours, and then you can engage in all the sordid activities you love best.”
Mason wriggles fingers under Liam’s waistband and Zayn slaps them away. “I don’t know, Henry,” he laughs, “some of the things we’re about to do are pretty obscene. Ready to start, Lee? I bet I can get you hard before we even strip off.”
Scowling, Zayn tugs Liam close by his shirt. In another world, likely one where he didn’t feel so defenceless, he would bite his neck, outline his cock, get him hard and needy, just for Zayn. Instead, he wraps his fingers around Liam’s bruised wrist, kisses the flinch off his cheeks.
Liam looks torn and so unfamiliar, and comes close in front of a room of production workers. “Louis will be here soon,” he says, into his hair, sounding incredibly wide open. “A kiss for good luck?”
Zayn complies, just slow enough to make Liam whine against his lips, and mumbles ‘I’m sorry’ into his mouth.
Teeth bite into his lip, just once, and Liam’s fingers fist in his hair. “Hey,” he whispers, between kisses. “Remember that first day, with the furniture?”
Zayn makes this helpless noise he hopes summarises easy smile, bare forearms, ‘you pull it off’ in a breath.
“You probably didn’t think anything of it,” Liam continues, sounding mortified and affectionate and so, so nervous, “but when I was fixing tea afterwards, you said you were absolutely unaffected by everything but black coffee. I always add milk because I want to be what affects you. And I like being the only one to get your heart racing. And I sort of love getting to calm you down, too.”
With one last kiss, before Zayn can reply, he crawls onto the bed and settles in the crook of Mason’s arm, turning towards the camera with an easy smile.
Zayn doesn’t listen to the obligatory foreplay conversation, only catches-
(“that’s new,” Mason says, tracing the kingfisher’s wings as Liam’s eyes involuntarily meet his across the bright room)
and
(Liam’s fingers catching on muscle groups Zayn didn’t know existed, flirting about how he’s going to ‘fuck you into shape, Mace, your gluts should be dedicated to me’)
and
(“I blew Liam under one of the desks at our high school,” he says, struggling to unbutton Liam’s skin-tight jeans with his mouth pressed to his crotch, “so he’s solely responsible for my steady decline into exhibitionism”)
between the white noise.
There are things Zayn can take and others he can’t, and while listening to Liam moan around a cock is bearable, he refuses to actually watch. Instead, he wedges himself between a row of screens and behind a cameraman and watches a lanky guy edit old footage.
He’s captivated by the sight of a younger Liam (no tattoo, all-American haircut, wearing plaid like he’s still a little unsure of his own body) doing sit-ups with Mason rewarding him with a kiss after every rep when the editor turns to flash him a smile. “You’re the boyfriend, right?” he says, and Zayn’s a little helpless at how much he enjoys the definition.
He nods and the editor passes him a set of headphones. On screen, they’re rolling around in bed and trading hot kisses and groaning like pulling away is the worst thing in the world whenever the cameraman asks them a question.
“Legal,” Liam answers, cheeky, with hair in his face and lips sucking at his neck.
Mason glances up at him, then, and Zayn’s so struck with how similar they look (what, with the muscles and the smiles and the misplaced innocence). “Barely,” he adds, “and we definitely weren’t that one time in sixth form in the stairwell-”
The next kiss catches him by surprise and he makes an indignant noise like he wants to keep talking but loses himself in Liam’s lips, instead.
The scene changes to the two of them in the shower, lathering each other up and trading cheesy pick up lines and rewarding strokes whenever one earns a laugh, and Zayn needs to look away at ‘you’re the only ten-I-see’.
Again and they’re blowing each other while everyone’s on break, another and they’re shoving themselves apart so they don’t come too soon, and then they’re on the couch as they talk about sex and ‘Mace, your hole is so sensitive, I bet you could come from being rimmed alone’ and ‘that sounds like an offer’.
He glances up from the screen and Liam has him spread across the bed, a hand fisted in his hair and the other wrenching his thighs apart. His hips roll just a little too short (like Zayn would, like Zayn did, only a few days ago in the morning light) and Mason writhes, arches, laughs ‘get the fuck off my prostate’, and Zayn’s entranced by this other side of Liam who shoves back, and he can’t-
||
(can’t stay quiet or sit still or pretend he doesn’t care that Liam’s sharing all their secrets with the rest of the world)
||
Louis finds him a cigarette later in one of the spare bedrooms with the window propped open to remove the dry smell of smoke and sex from the air. He’s absolutely nothing like Niall was that day in the fire escape, all calm and understanding and blonde hair and easy camaraderie. Instead, he climbs into Zayn’s lap and says, “wonder how many guys have sweated over this futon?”
“Lou,” he scowls, blushing into his neck, and he’s certain it’s a distraction tactic because a moment later he adds, “there are two great tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.”
He’s silent, for a moment, and then he snorts. “That’s from One Tree Hill.”
“Actually, it’s George Bernard Shaw-”
“Also it’s total bullshit,” he says, before Zayn can really discuss the merits of Irish dramatism. “Is your least favourite part of the day waking up beside him? Are your stupid bird tattoos the ugliest thing you’ve ever inked into your skin? Is having a boy that gone for you really the worst thing to ever happen to you?”
The memory of Liam leaning over his essay, lips catching over ‘discernible’, clears his lungs better than the nicotine. “He’s not really gone for me anymore, though.”
Louis sighs in that awfully put-upon way. “I drove to Wolverhampton during Christmas break because of your inability to talk about your feelings outside of pretentious prose,” he says, quiet in the acoustic-heavy room, “and Liam had more alcohol in his blood than oxygen, and kept saying ‘I’m his just, but I’m still just his’. You’ve spent the past two days moping and this is getting ridiculous because you’re actually a Beatles song. And none of that I want to hold your hand, bullshit, I’m talking when I’m sixty-four sugar-coated kisses, joint custody over a puppy and a silver wedding anniversary before you’re forty.”
He can’t quite stop thinking of Liam for another twenty-five years, just like this, so he nearly misses when Louis shoots him a triumphant smile and adds-
“Now, go on. Go get your damn tragedy, you shameless post-modernist stereotype.”
||
He hovers in the doorway and watches as Liam licks the come off Mason’s chest and presses it between his lips with his tongue. They kiss a little longer than necessary and whisper things no one else is supposed to hear as the camera pans over their chests pressed together, Mason’s arms slotted around his neck, the lazy tangle of his legs around Liam’s waist.
When they separate, someone holding a mic wolf-whistles and Liam fumbles a sheet around his waist to cover the flush of his chest. He meets Zayn’s eyes across the crowded room and leads him wordlessly into the second bathroom, the one without the studio lights, and strips Zayn off with that economic precision he usually reserves for himself.
The water is still cold when they slip under the rainfall showerhead. Goosebumps spread across Liam’s shoulders and Zayn focuses there, kisses the nape of his neck while hands scrape all the lube and sweat off his chest.
“That first day,” Liam says, a little broken, “in the hall, you- you thought you had everyone fooled. You wore those stupid boots and talked about Hemingway over dinner and I can remember thinking wow, I can’t wait to take this boy apart.”
They’re trembling, now, and Zayn can’t help but think that he was so, so right when he called Liam spring, unpredictable and golden in any light. He scrapes his teeth over a broad shoulder and waits while the hot water stings their bare skin.
Liam dances fingertips over his forearm, spelling out ‘hello’ and ‘I miss you’ and ‘tomorrow’. “You spent this whole weekend trying to trick me with syllable answers,” he whispers. “I just want you to know that it didn’t work. It didn’t work today and it won’t work tomorrow and it will never work, because I know you. I know you’ll compromise on the coffee now you know why, and I know you used to sneak out before dawn to brush your teeth so we could kiss in the morning, and I know how long it takes for you to get irritated when we’re out for too long, and I know how you look when you laugh ironically, and I know you’re just as obscenely infatuated with me as I am with you.”
The door creaks open and Louis and Mason shoving an ipod dock onto the counter with that kind of manic glee that foreshadows doom in their apartment. The Righteous Brothers play and Liam blushes, throwing a bar of soap at the speaker to switch to Maroon 5.
Liam twists to face him and his lips are swollen, and there are bruises Zayn didn’t leave all over his chest and an unknown intensity in his eyes. “I wanted you to hurt, today,” Liam whispers. “And I’m not going to apologise for that, yet. I wanted you to see that we’re something people write sonnets about. We’re not a neutral. We’re a spectrum. And if you could please tell me - and not in Eliot or fucking Austen, just be real for me-”
“You’re real, to me,” he says, just for the way Liam’s water-stained lips curl into a grin, “and I would write you sonnets if they weren’t-”
“Conformist and the cyanide of the creative mind,” he finishes, sounding so incredibly fond. “I listen, you know that.”
And then, quieter, when they’re brushing their lips together sweetly and Liam’s whimpering in some kind of masochistic pleasure, Zayn adds ‘I have three rules and I broke them all for you’ because Zayn’s always loved spring, and now he loves Liam, too.
||
(they go on their very first date a week later on Valentine’s Day. Liam buys him a bouquet of roses and Zayn holds his hand over dinner and they snog in the back row during Flight, and it feels a little like a new beginning when they whisper a synchronised ‘I love you’ as they kiss goodnight on their doorstep)