ZIAM ONE-SHOTS (BOTTOM LIAM)

it started with you and started with me

Author: thearcherballet

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4780103

Summary:

It starts like this: you love a boy more than you love your own music, until he becomes the song your heart sings.
Solo artist Zayn Malik is recording his third album when he finds himself working with a new music producer, the amateur talent Liam Payne. Liam is saddled with the task to prove that Zayn can be the greatest musician of the 21st century. Zayn's musical barriers start melting away as things get heated up in the recording studio.

It's not that Zayn hates recording.

He just usually hates record producers.

The constant directions of I need more emotion, Zayn, or You can hit that note a lot better, Zayn, or whatever bullshit comment they kept adding. It all unnerved him. It sounds great to him, it's his music.

After consulting with his manager, they told him they'd find him a nicer producer that could be patient enough with him. With a roll of his eyes and a muttered Good luck with that, he'd continued on with his life. Zayn had continued writing more mature lyrics, trying them out with a beat-up piano he'd grown fond of at a vintage place Harry once took him to. Then, at last, he decided which ones were best to try out at the studio. A second talk with his management later, they told him they'd found a newer, younger record producer that seemed very promising and had been producing music behind-the-scenes for smaller, but great artists nonetheless.

Great, they'd probably sent in a teenage wanna-be DJ to help him with his sound, he thought. Just great.

Zayn sighed as he entered the recording room, throwing himself on the sofa that was left there for him. He opened his notebook full with his lyrics, riddled with doodles on the margins, to peruse it as he waited for the new guy to get there. Yet, the coldness and emptiness of the room started to make his eyelids droop, and after catching himself yawning a third time, he closed his eyes to wait for the producer to arrive.

He woke with a jolt, hearing soft music coming from within the recording booth's piano. Frowning, he walked over to see a man hunched over a piano with noise-canceling headphones on. With his notebook in front of him.

Zayn stomped into the booth, furious, filled with purpose to snatch the guy's headphones and probably throttle him for invasion of privacy. However, he stopped short next to him when he caught a glimpse of his face.

His posture was completely relaxed, eyes closed and eyebrows furrowed as if trying to let everything he felt slip away through the movement of his fingers on the keyboard, pink lips pressed together with concentration. It was like staring at art in the making, and he didn't want to disrupt that.

When at last he finished the movement, Zayn didn't realize he'd been standing right next to him the entire time. The man opened his eyes, revealing something akin to triumph in the way they lit up. As he scrambled to turn off the recording device on top of the piano, he slipped off his headphones and Zayn realized he himself had to make a noise of some sort to let him know he was there.

Clearing his throat, he took pleasure in the way the man jumped and clutched at his chest. "Jesus Christ, mate, how long were you standing there?"

Zayn smirked, "Long enough to notice you have my lyrics there, yeah," he nodded at the said thing. "That's private."

"Yeah, I might've snatched it while you were sleeping, but the lyrics just caught my eye," the man looked sheepish, rubbing at the back of his neck where he was flushed. "They seemed pretty inspiring."