Work Text:
Like most wannabe starving artists, Zayn's creative processes hinge on mass caffeine consumption. What a cliche he's become. He thinks back to a time - before his thrice fucked up attempts at undergrad, before the money-suck that was art school, before moving to a shitty flat in Camden above a shittier pub - when he didn't even care about the shit; it seems like forever ago. Probably because it was.
But he's felt good as of late, like the few good things he's strung together over the past months are finally taking shape. The twelve issue deal with the independent publisher came first, and the added income of a comic strip running in some nameless borough publication came next. Then there was Casper the stray cat (at first Zayn wasn't keen on keeping him, but he scratches at Harry when he's being particularly insufferable and gives Zayn something warm to sleep with at night, so), and that tall girl with the tongue ring, and now the tiny corner coffee shop with the seemingly perfect natural lighting and quiet, still mornings.
And yeah, the tall girl with the tongue ring (Monica? Mareid? Mascarpone? She had an M name) didn't stick, but those other two things remain important. Casper has a spot on the windowsill in the kitchen that he likes to watch Zayn make breakfast from and the coffee shop has begun to feel like a place he could settle into.
He's got a lot going for him, all in all. And he loves his job: the spontaneity of creation, the days of attention a single panel may require. But lead breaks and oils smudge, and some days are harder than others. At his worst, Zayn collapses in on himself; he thinks himself into oblivion, back to the mess he made of himself in art school. What a fucked up teenager he was and all the things he should’ve known better about.
Sometimes he finds himself poring over old photos and notes and poems and feeling mopey and sad, because that's the type of person he is. That's also the type of person, it turns out, that illustrates gritty post-apocalyptic teen romance graphic novels. (It's a new genre that Zayn's weaseled his way into; when asked why, he says, "I'm getting paid to do it, so there's someone out there who likes it, eh?") When you're both those types of people, frustration and nostalgia and fear all leak onto paper and swirl together to build make-believe worlds and cities and people and lives.
Most of his work gets done at the coffee shop because it's unmarred by the past: no loss, no abandonment, no hollowness. Harry starts to worry, asking if he’s met someone cooler than him to spend all his time with, but Zayn just tells him, “That really wouldn’t be hard,” and Harry leaves him be. The coffee shop is warm and worn and safe, and Zayn spends his mornings sketching while the buzz of people going about their days lulls him into a single-minded creative haze.
On a bad day, he's thrumming with unpleasant memories, bearing his soul and still feeling lost. On a good day, he's vindicated and safe and tethered.
On most good days, he's drawing.
He realizes how attached he is to Liam when he starts dreaming about him.
He was a throwaway character at first: a drug dealer's do-gooding roommate who goes for early morning runs and sweeps baggies out from under the couch. But then Zayn makes the mistake of giving him a very specific wardrobe - lots of plaid, like a guy Zayn dated back in school - and even, expressive eyebrows - like a guy Zayn brought home a few weekends ago - and Liam becomes a bit more important. He starts to give Liam a lot of the things he misses about people who are no longer in his life: a borderline pyromaniac love of lighters; an embarrassingly endearing tendency to stutter and stop short in the middle of thoughts, even when he knows what he wants to say; a penchant for knowing exactly what Zayn wants to eat before Zayn himself even knows. Just to name a few.
Most of all, Liam is happy. Always happy.
Eventually he writes Liam a better job and and a more colorful wardrobe, and "eventually" just happens to coincide with the point that Zayn's life feels like it's coming together - the twelve issue deal, the comic strip, the stray cat, and the A-plus coffee shop. It's more than luck, Zayn decides, and spends a week drawing Liam an entirely-too-intricate-for-a-nonsense-secondary-character narrative. He's very unlike Zayn in many ways - boyish and clean cut and sunny. But he's also quite like many of the people Zayn brought into his life, and a lot of the people that Zayn has watched leave.
By the time he realizes he's created a conglomerate of everyone he's ever loved in a fictional character, Liam has already infiltrated his dreams. At first it's just in the periphery, but soon Zayn begins to see him more intimately... mostly in the form of Liam sucking his dick.
He finds that one of the perils of having a cat is the wave of embarrassment that comes with waking up from a wet dream to two tiny green eyes, staring him down both quizzically and knowingly. Casper seems understanding, though. Zayn thinks he'd be understanding if he'd met Liam, too.
But he isn't real, Zayn reminds himself. Casper can't meet him and neither can Harry because he isn't real.
The dreams get more and more intense, and for a while Zayn has to cut down his coffee shop time because even the thought of drawing Liam gets Zayn halfway hard. One night, Liam - who is a character, who is not real, who is not real - wraps his thick arms and wide palms around Zayn and fucks him, pressing him against the wall of his shower. Another time Liam ties him up and pokes and prods at him curiously, pressing his fingers into places Zayn was sure couldn’t make him feel like that, even in a dreamworld. Zayn sits bolt upright in bed and spends the next ten minutes breathing deeply, letting the hot knots of want curled in his stomach unfurl.
Aside from creaming his pants for a fictional character, though, Zayn's doing okay.
Except for the fact that he has to start most of his days by locking Casper out of the bathroom and wanking for twenty minutes.
There's a long, worn leather couch pressed against the front window of the coffee shop that might as well have Zayn's name on it. He only abandons it when he needs a flat surface, and sometimes he just yanks the low table in the middle of the room towards him and spreads out on top of that.
One Friday morning he gets to the shop so early that there's only one other person inside, and that person is laying on Zayn's couch.
Zayn stops right inside the door, staring down at the guy. He's spread out on his stomach, face pressed into a pile of darkly-colored pillows.
Zayn takes a second to survey the situation: there's a machine gurgling quietly behind the counter, so this guy must work here. Zayn doesn't recognize him from his back, but he gives him the benefit of the doubt.
Instead of staring at Sleeping Beauty, Zayn decides to try out a chair across from his couch. It's alright, but not quite the same; it's not as comfortable and the light doesn't have the right slant. When he thunks his bag down on the floor next to him, the guy starts and snuffles. He sits up and Zayn watches as his eyes clear and focus on him, panic drawing across his face like a tidal wave.
"Good morning?" Zayn hazards.
"Sorry, sorry sorry sorry," the guy starts. "I -- this is so irresponsible, I just opened. I shouldn't be sleeping at work."
"I'm more excited about the fact that I can have my favorite seat back." Zayn wouldn't normally be so cheeky with a stranger, but the flush of embarrassment looks good on the guy. He's red in the face, but classically good-looking in a way Zayn doesn't mind: a bit of blonde in his brown hair, deep brown eyes, a level brow, and the faintest shadow across his jaw.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." The guy stands up quickly. "I was -- I was up late last night."
"S'alright, mate," Zayn laughs quietly, reclaiming his couch. "Relax. Thursday night's practically the weekend."
The guy shakes his head. "I wasn't even out. I was home reading."
"Yeah?" Zayn looks up at him over the top of his glasses. "I was home drawing."
"Oh?" the guy says noncommittally, head still bowed in embarrassment. He slips behind the counter and loops an apron around his neck, and Zayn thinks the conversation is over. He's starting to pull his stuff out when the guy speaks again.
"Tea?" he asks. Zayn looks over as he shuffles around behind the counter, stocking this and that.
"Thanks," he says, because he'd forgotten he hadn't had anything before he left his flat. Too interesting a morning.
After a minute, the guy returns - face markedly less red, but just as good-looking - sliding a mug and a dish of pastries onto the table between them.
"Because, you know," he says with a wilted smile, "you could've robbed me, when you came in. But. You didn't."
Zayn nods, smiling back companionably. "Thanks, kind stranger."
"You're the kind stranger." The guy sticks his hand out. "Liam."
Zayn almost flinches - Liam - but remembers to offer his own hand in return. "Zayn."
Liam leans over to buff a water ring off the table. "Nice to meet you."
Zayn flips a notebook open and pulls out a pencil, reaching for the first of the pastries in the same motion. He slants a glance at Liam, face a bit closer as he’s hunched over the table, and their eyes meet as Zayn tries to cough and pretend he wasn't sneaking a look. "Yeah, likewise."
He figures he's caused Liam enough embarrassment and excitement for one morning, but just as he's about to press his pencil to paper he feels Liam above him, leaning back across the table.
"Wait," he says, and his hand clamps down on Zayn's shoulder. "When you said drawing, you meant this?" He shakes Zayn a bit. "You meant See the Light of Day?"
"Wait, you recognize it?" Zayn looks up at him.
"I was reading the fourth issue last night. That's what I was up late reading." Liam's eyes are huge. "Is this -- oh my god, is this the next one? You really draw this?"
"You really read this?" Zayn is absolutely incredulous; outside of professional contacts and wankers in the industry, he's never met anyone who recognized his stuff.
"Absolutely! Can't get enough!" Zayn almost asks if he's taking the piss out of him, but Liam looks so goddamn earnest that Zayn knows he's being truthful. "I can't believe you draw all this! I -- I'm buzzing!"
Just as Zayn takes his turn flushing, the little bell above the shop's door dings. Three girls enter and they don't seem intent on sitting down to relax; they're at the counter before Liam can even greet them.
"I've gotta be over there," Liam says unnecessarily, pointing. "But you do that - this - so I can read it. I mean, not now, but later. When it's done, of course."
Zayn has to bite his lip to keep from smiling too widely. "Yeah, okay."
Only later, when he's watching a designer lay out his panels on a computer screen, does he realize that not only has one of his characters come to life, but he also served Zayn's tea this morning.
There are movies about things like this - written characters coming to life, haunting authors, killing their creators. Is that what this is? Is Zayn being punished?
It must be a different kind of punishment, because Zayn can't seem to figure out Liam's schedule at the shop; he's not there Saturday morning or all day Sunday, and Zayn doesn't see him at all on his afternoon visits that week. He starts to wonder if he actually did make Liam up. Or if he projected made-up Liam into his real life, which means he's going crazy. Either way he's going crazy; it would seem that this way is just a bit more fantastical.
Harry must sense his decline further into the fog of insanity because he asks Zayn the same set of questions over and over: “Have you found someone to fuck?” and, “Why are you drawing this boring wanker so much?” and, “But really: are you alright?”
After a week he resigns himself to the fact that Liam was never real and ratchets his coffee intake up to a level that makes him feel like he's high. He buzzes through the last few drawings for the issue that's due at the end of the month and spends his evenings over the weekend sketching at the shop. His eyes swing toward the door every time the bell rattles, but it's never Liam.
He heads home late that night and stops outside his flat to have a cigarette. Zayn has an awful habit of letting his keys dangle from the lock in his door while he smokes, and Harry tells him that one day someone is going to run up and snatch them and break in and steal everything they own. Zayn tends to ignore Harry when he talks like that, because it’s not his fault they don’t have a stoop. He has to lean against a drainpipe on the far side of the door, body angled away from the pub. It's noisy on Saturday night, people buzzing around outside and loud music bleeding out onto the street from within.
A tall figure in a maroon jacket is loping up the sidewalk across the street, and before Zayn can stop himself, he's shouting Liam's name. When the guy looks up, Zayn blinks a few times. It’s too good to be true.
"This where you live?" Liam asks with a shout, surveying the area. He crosses the street and stops right in front of Zayn. "Or do you always smoke an awkward, yet socially acceptable distance away from pub patrons?" His face is soft and Zayn knows immediately not to take him seriously, to give it back instead.
Zayn raises his eyebrows anyway. "Is this usually how you greet people that save you from losing your job?"
Liam colors a bit, the same flush that Zayn saw on him the day they met. It's still lovely.
"I'm sorry, you're right." Liam positions himself against the other side of the door frame, between Zayn and the pub. "I bite my tongue."
Zayn takes another drag from his cigarette and then tosses it to the ground, rubbing it into the pavement with his toe. "No harm no foul," he says, and then hates himself, because since when is a phrase like that a part of his vocabulary?
When he slips another cigarette out of the pack, Liam sticks his hand out. At first Zayn thinks he's trying to bum one, but then he sees that Liam's holding a lighter. He lights Zayn's cigarette without a word. When Zayn waves the pack at him, Liam just shakes his head. "I don't smoke."
Zayn narrows his eyes. "But you carry a lighter."
Liam flicks the dial over and over, letting the flame waver for only a second. "I started a fire at my cousin's wedding, melting plastic forks over those little tea lights," he confesses.
"Problem child."
"I was seventeen."
"Troubled young-adult. Even worse."
Liam shrugs. "I just like fire."
Zayn nods, smoke caught in his lungs for a second. "Pyro," he exhales.
Liam smiles, but doesn't let Zayn see any of his teeth. "A bit."
Before Zayn can even smile back, Liam says, "I haven't see you in a while. At the shop."
"Or at all," Zayn counters, and then thinks, what are you doing why are you such an asshole.
"That too," Liam admits. And this would be the perfect time to ask him about his hours at the shop, or invite him up for tea, or grope him, or anything, but Zayn sucks the smoke out of his cigarette for a second too long just as Liam's mobile rings.
Zayn tilts his eyes down and lets Liam dig deep into his pocket for his phone. He answers it with just a, "Mmm?" and lets the other person do the talking. The voice is low, and the only real word Liam says before he hangs up is, "Okay."
"I've, erm," Liam starts, and Zayn looks up at him. "Gotta go. I've gotta meet someone." Zayn just nods.
"Not that I had plans," he says quickly. "Or -- have plans. But someone needs me."
He's stammering like he did that morning at the shop and Zayn wants to smile, but doesn't want to give Liam the wrong idea; he doesn’t want him to go. He wants to keep staring at him from under his eyelashes, coated in the bad fluorescent lighting of the pub below Zayn's flat. He wants to talk to him. He wants him closer.
"That's alright." Liam is texting furiously; Zayn heart lurches. He feels like he just tripped while running a marathon. His momentum is back to zero.
"I've -- " Liam can't seem to finish a sentence. "I've gotta go. It's kind of important." He looks Zayn square in the eye. "But I work Monday morning."
Before Zayn can say okay or thank god or see you then, Liam's walking away.
He spends some time drawing Liam before he sees him again. He gives his character a new pair of trainers and crops his hair a bit. He draws him slanted against a drainpipe, flicking a lighter over and over. He draws him bathed in the shitty light of a shittier pub. He draws him in bed with another man.
He dreams about Liam, but he can't tell if it's the character or the real person.
Zayn's greeted with a smile Monday morning and that's all he could ask for. Liam putters around the shop as Zayn spreads his stuff out. He's trying his hardest to keep a lid on his relief and not grin too maniacally.
"Awake!" Liam says cheerily.
"I'm just glad there's not a warm body mushed into my couch," Zayn responds, trying not to smirk.
Liam looks offended as he bends down to grab something. "Are you calling me mushy?" he shouts from under the counter.
Zayn feels like a schoolgirl with a crush. "I wouldn't dare."
Liam brings him tea and takes a minute to stare over Zayn's shoulder as he flips open his books. But it fills up quickly for a Monday morning; Zayn forgets people have real jobs that require real schedules that have them getting coffee every morning to get through the day. He wants to talk to Liam, but he's pressing buttons on whirring machines and punching the cash register and mixing coffee with everything else imaginable.
He has to leave late into the morning to deliver some proofs to his publisher in the city, and by that time he’s lost track of Liam completely. When Zayn stands, he intends to just wave and see himself out. Liam's busy, and he can just come back tomorrow to have another chat.
But when he sees Liam's face, all shiny-eyed and open and full of joy - albeit caffeine-induced joy, but joy nonetheless - he can't stand the thought of waiting until tomorrow to see him again. It's a feeling Zayn hasn't experienced in a while: wanting to peel off the complicated layers and dive out of his comfort zone headfirst. So he rips a corner off a sheet of paper in his sketchbook and scribbles down his mobile number. When Liam's got his back turned, he drops the paper into the tip jar and sneaks out the door.
Zayn fingers his phone in his pocket for the rest of the day, high on enough adrenaline to make him feel delusional. All you did was give a guy your phone number, he tells himself. Relax. He gets a text as he’s leaving the tube, at the top of the Camden Town escalator.
clever sir :) pint tonight @ that pub?
Zayn’s never been happier to live above that disgusting fucking pub.
But when he meets Liam there, the pub feels a lot like the coffee shop - warm and safe and kind of perfect. It doesn't make sense at first, but Zayn realizes it's because he has Liam with him, laughing with crinkled eyes and telling stories accompanied by huge hand gestures and sliding pint after pint across the table to Zayn.
Liam asks about his drawings and his career and Zayn explains how it all just happened, more like an accident than anything else. He’d always drawn, even as a toddler - on walls or sidewalks or books or bus seats.
“I can’t not do it,” he explains, and Liam nods. “You know? Is that a thing? That makes sense?”
Liam laughs, one of his fists dropping to pound on the table. “It really does, I think.”
“How long have you worked at the coffee shop?” Zayn asks, because talking about himself is tiring and his mouth is starting to feel weighty and slick.
“A long fucking time,” Liam tells him. “I wanna be a pilot. I wanna build airplanes. That’s what I’ve always wanted.” Liam rolls his eyes at himself. “I wanna lotta things.”
Zayn shakes his head; his brain feels like it’s wrapped in a blanket. “Why aren’t you doing those things?” he asks earnestly.
Liam rubs his thumb and forefinger together. “I didn’t go to school ‘cause I never had the money.”
“I don’t have a lot of money,” Zayn says, throwing his hands up, “but you have to do the things you love. You know?” Liam looks kind of skeptical. “One day, you’re gonna build the most badass plane ever,” Zayn tells him. “You are.”
“Okay, Nostradamus. Telling the future and shit.” Liam’s laughing at his own jokes, and Zayn’s smile is broad and bright and he feels the most genuine affection for Liam, moreso than he can remember feeling for anyone ever in the recent past or far past or future and Liam waves a waitress over to order them more drinks and Zayn’s okay with that, he’s pretty sure he is.
As she turns back to the bar, Liam stands. “Stay here, I’ve gotta piss.”
"You've gotta come upstairs with me," Zayn blurts. "Because I have a bathroom."
Liam freezes, but doesn't look scared. "Right. Okay."
“We can go now,” he says. Liam slaps some cash down on the table and it’s double-time up the stairs, the complicated slickness of Zayn’s keys the only thing keeping them from getting inside. Liam laughs and lets his head loll forward onto Zayn’s shoulder.
The door clicks shut and Zayn can’t wait another second; he presses Liam up against the wall and gets a hand in his hair, pulling him forward and fitting their mouths together. Zayn opens Liam’s mouth wide, cups his jaw and slides his tongue in beside Liam’s own. He hears himself make a heavy groaning sound when Liam bites down on his lip, slipping a hand under the back of his shirt to press them flush against one another.
Zayn shifts his mouth to Liam’s neck, running a hand down to his belt to work his way into Liam’s trousers. Liam cants his hips off the wall to let Zayn get a fist around his cock and it’s only a few minutes with his mouth working against Liam’s and his hand down his pants before Liam’s broken apart under Zayn, coming between them.
And if Zayn wasn't already head over heels for this guy, Liam barely lets Zayn pull his hand out from between his legs before his mouth is up under his shirt, attached to Zayn's stomach, smothering the hot skin there with his tongue.
Zayn pulls his shirt off and starts to kick his trousers down, unabashed in his desire to get naked now now now. He has a sudden flash of Harry appearing and finding him flush against the wall, cock out, and he pulls Liam around the corner and into his bedroom. He’s pretty sure neither of them need to hear Harry Styles sing-song, Remember that time I found a bloke with your dick in his mouth right inside the front door? Remember?, intolerably smug.
The rest happens quickly: Liam pulls Zayn glasses off, gets a fist around his cock, and sucks a spot on Zayn’s neck that might never return to its natural color. Zayn’s brain moves sluggishly, but he refuses to let himself fall asleep until he’s slotted their hips together and made Liam come again.
“C’mere,” Liam whispers, and pulls Zayn tight up against him. Their lips meet again and Zayn can’t bear to pull away, nose-to-nose, breathing with Liam until he feels the flutter of eyelashes against his cheek, falling asleep wrapped up in the warmth of his chest.
Zayn wakes up to a stifling stillness. No breathing, no running water, no footsteps - nothing. He rolls over and entertains the romantic notion of the empty side of the bed still being warm, but it's pressed flat and cold. His glasses are exactly where Liam threw them late into the night, wrapped around the bedside lamp like a horseshoe.
His last hope comes crashing down when he enters his empty kitchen, coffee pot cold and sink empty. His visions of Liam leaning against his counter having a cuppa in only his pants evaporate.
He dresses frantically and stops for a second to stare at himself in the mirror. Don't be stupid, he tells himself. He probably had to work. He probably told you when you were drunk.
Casper appears, perched on the edge of the toilet, and Zayn scowls at him. Just go and see if he’s at work. He must’ve had a good reason to leave. He feels more than halfway crazy.
He doesn't even get into the coffee shop before he sees Liam. He's spread on Zayn's couch right in front of the window with a girl on his lap.
She's looking down at him, chunks of curly hair obscuring her face, but Liam's laughing and his eyes are lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree. One of her hands slides up the side of his neck and stills at his jaw and Zayn is struck by the fact that he knows exactly what that spot feels like under his mouth.
Zayn sees Liam's eyes flick over toward him, toward the outside world, and he feels rooted to the spot for a second. Rooted to this moment.
When Liam turns to look at him in earnest, Zayn turns away to go home to his empty flat.
Zayn thought this was it. This was it. This was the height of his upswing, what he'd be waiting for - the publishing deal, the slinky stray cat, and waking up with Liam wrapped tightly around him in the morning. He didn't know how badly he'd wanted it until he had it ripped away from him.
He should have know that would end in loss. In his loss.
He turns off his phone and computer and kicks his notebooks under the couch. He ignores his work, emails he knows he has from clients and newspapers and publishers and sleeps for indiscriminate amounts of time. He finds himself drinking, bottles materializing in his hand and there’s no one around to tell him to think about what he’s doing or stop or anything because he hasn’t seen Harry in days. He hasn’t really been paying attention.
Not even picking up his pen could break him out of his funk, because whenever he thinks about drawing he thinks about Liam, the real one and the fake one and how they might as well be the same person. A person who was too good to be true, too perfect to be real, to anything to be everything, blah blah blah.
He has to leave the flat eventually, to mail a packet of sketches to a company in the US. He makes to turn left and there’s a body in front of him, leaning none too gracefully against the drainpipe.
Liam blinks like he can’t believe Zayn’s actually right there in front of him. His mouth gapes open for a second, but Zayn doesn’t give him time to speak.
“What are you doing?” Zayn asks, exasperated and in no way prepared to have this conversation.
“This is going to sound ridiculous, but I can explain.” Liam takes a step toward him. “Everything.”
“I don’t care,” Zayn lies, and in that moment he’s sure it’s the most painful lie he’s ever told.
“I can explain,” Liam says again.
“I don’t want to hear it.” Zayn takes a step backwards, moving back into the doorway of his flat.
Liam shakes his head, standing up straight. “This isn’t what I wanted to happen.”
“You think this is what I wanted to happen?” Zayn shouts. "Are you still in the fucking closet or something? Are you using me? Because I don't fucking know to deal with that."
"No, no no -- " Liam starts.
"I should have fucking known you were too perfect," Zayn spits. He leans out and pushes Liam, gets both hands flat against his chest and shoves him, because he needs more space between them. Liam stumbles into a huge step back, falling into the path of pedestrian traffic. When he looks at Zayn, there’s a glassy woundedness to his eyes.
"Just fucking waltzing into my life. Should've known it wouldn't last. It's like I made you up."
"Zayn -- " Liam tries, but Zayn interrupts him.
"You know what? I'm just going to pretend I did," Zayn tells him, and slams the door in Liam's face. The package never makes it out of the foyer.
He doesn’t move for an entire day, burrowed deep under the covers in his bed and patently uninterested in the outside world. When he finally encounters Harry on one of his treks between his bedroom and the refrigerator, he waits for him to start throwing barbs: you look like hell, who fucked you up, who did you fuck, etc., etc.
Instead, Harry’s face falls when he sees Zayn’s rumpled form. He must be a bigger mess than he thought.
“I thought you were sick... I didn’t want to bother you.”
“I would rather be sick,” Zayn tells him, and Harry envelops him in a hug that means a lot more than Zayn can bear to articulate.
Harry drags him out to the couch and doubles back to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Zayn faceplants into the cushions and Harry shouts, “Where’d you find him?”
“That place I’ve been drawing, the coffee shop,” Zayn says into a pillow. He feels Harry’s footfalls enter the room, and he crawls onto Zayn’s legs to make a spot for himself on the couch.
“And what did he do?” Harry asks.
Zayn thinks for a second. He sits up and makes the mistake of looking at Harry, who squints back at him suspiciously.
“He left, the morning after. And I saw him with a girl.”
“You can’t do this,” Harry tells him with frightening force. “You can’t do this to yourself, making everything more complicated by assuming things. You don’t even know who she is.”
“She was on his lap -- ”
“So? I’ve sat on your lap before.”
Zayn shakes his head. “It wasn’t like that.”
“How do you know?” Harry bugs his eyes out wide, trying on a sage, knowing look. “How do you know?”
And just as Zayn envisions himself rearing back to throw a punch at Harry because of how insufferably, optimistically right he probably - hopefully - is, and how idiotic he makes Zayn feel on such a consistent basis, Casper hops up onto the arm of the couch and settles down into Harry’s lap, light as a feather.
“See? He knows I’m right too,” Harry says, and this is why it’s easier to live without a cat or a flatmate.
“You haven’t even said anything,” Zayn mumbles.
Harry smirks triumphantly for a second, but comes back to earth quickly. “Really, mate. Talk to him?”
“I don’t know where I’d even start,” Zayn admits.
“You fuck yourself up over things like this and it’s not fair. To you, or to him.” Harry reaches over Casper to lay a hand on Zayn’s shoulder. “I’ve seen you less torn up about people you’ve known for years,” Harry says quietly. “He matters.”
Zayn sighs. “You incisive bastard.”
Harry’s smiling again. “Someone swallowed a dictionary this morning!” and with that he throws Casper into Zayn’s lap and heads back into the kitchen, mug in hand. “Talk to him!”
“Insufferable!” Zayn calls after him. But as Casper starts to purr and Harry starts to clink around in the sink with the pots and pans, Zayn thinks about Liam and his stupid happy smile and his huge hands and perfect laugh and knows what he has to do.
He ends up back at the coffee shop, hand-shaking, dry-mouthed nervous. It’s early and quiet and he wants to talk to Liam alone. The bell jingles and Liam doesn’t even turn around; there’s something in the slump of his shoulders that signals he knows exactly who has just walked in.
“If you were asleep on my couch, I don’t think I’d have the courage to wake you up,” Zayn starts, and it’s stupid and absolutely meaningless, but Liam hasn’t disappeared out the back or slung any crockery at his face, so Zayn thinks he might have something going here.
“Come here,” Liam tells him, and Zayn meets him at the counter.
“I’m too ashamed to say anything but ‘I’m sorry,’” Zayn says. He can barely look at Liam. “I’m so sorry.”
Liam grips his chin lightly, tilting Zayn’s face upward. “You don’t even have to say that.”
“Yes I do,” Zayn says. “I shouted at you on the street. I pushed you. On the street.”
Liam shrugs. “It happens. I know what you saw, and how shit it looked -- ”
“But I’m so stupid,” Zayn pleads.
“ -- and she’s just an old friend, from forever and ever ago -- ”
“So stupid,” Zayn says again.
“ -- and I’ve always thought apologies were just a waste of precious time -- ”
“Stupid,” Zayn whispers.
“ -- because - and I hope I’m not being presumptuous here - I’m going to say that your anger was proportional to how much you like me.” Liam smiles expectantly, his cheeks reddening softly. Zayn’s never seen anyone blush so goddamn beautifully.
“I think I’ve almost got this figured out, Zayn,” Liam tells him. “I think you’ve just got to trust me.”
Zayn has always associated pangs of fear with statements like that: I know you, I can tell what you’re thinking, I’ve figured you out. But as he looks at Liam, smile ready to break into a grin, he knows what he’s really saying is I’ve figured you out and this is what I’m here for. I’ve figured you out; let’s have a go.
“Not presumptuous at all,” Zayn mumbles, and Liam takes his glasses off his face and kisses him in the quiet of the empty shop.
When Liam comes over that night, Zayn gives him a tour of the place and even lets him talk to Harry for a few minutes before he drags him into his bedroom and sucks his dick with painstaking care. Liam writhes and pants Zayn’s name and they only stop when Zayn hears Harry let Casper into the room, because Harry is not above interrupting apologetic blowjobs for the sake of some light ridicule.
Harry cooks and Liam doesn’t bother putting his shirt back on. He leans in and bites Zayn’s neck whenever Harry leaves the room, and he lets Casper press and knead into his shoulders as he lays across the couch, head in Zayn’s lap.
“Having someone like you around is going to take some getting used to,” Zayn tells him, petting his hair.
Liam scowls. “What’s that s’pposed to mean?”
“You’re so...” Zayn can’t think of the word. “You’re so good.”
Liam rolls over and noses at Zayn’s crotch. “I’m not that good.”
When they’re finally falling asleep - Liam on one side, Casper on the other, and Harry’s snores leaking through the thin walls - and Liam asks him, voice hoarse and eyes all sleepy, “How did the fifth issue come out?” Zayn finally feels it all click.