ZIAM ONE-SHOTS (BOTTOM LIAM)

pray tell

Author: xxcaribbean

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851491

Summary:

and maybe this isn't what they were playing at towards the beginning but it has most certainly escalated between the two.

Zayn's never known love until he met Liam.

He's also never known death until he'd ultimately gotten to know Liam too.

It's a hard line to distinguish, when one is genuine and where the turning point begins because everything and nothing can go wrong all at once.

It starts on a Thursday, the day they fall for one another as they both later recall it. After tired sighs and desperate glances, they finally give in.

Liam makes the first move. Zayn's surprised simply because Liam had always been riding the fine edge of their friendship since the day the both of them met and for him to take the ultimate plunge meant a new beginning, a certain ending.

Everything is fine, at first. They're dating, and they love and they pray and they have sex as they should, as couples do. They fake it for the fans, wide smiles behind beards that tell a different story, that their hearts don't yearn for someone of the same gender because that would be wrong and that would lose money.

So they fake it behind a façade of everything else they can withstand, and that's all fine too, taking it day by day, night by night until they can sneak glances and kisses against the backdrop of a perfectly painted picture they've carved into a Styrofoam wall, because even if that material is made to withstand a walk in the park and the coldness of ice, it doesn't last very long until it comes crumbling down.

They're happy on tour and through interviews for the camera, for magazines for everyone who will listen until it all adds up and becomes an unspoken burden on their backs, both carrying sorrows and unwillingness to go on, to continue with a game of truth or dare because their truth is what keeps them at bay and the dare is the only way to shy away from a reality they can't expose.

"I think he slept with her."

Zayn hears it first one night from Niall who's been ever supportive of the two but tonight comes a different story when he finds Zayn and tells him what he knows, or at least what he thinks he knows.

"Don't say shit like that."

Zayn ignores it at first because that's fuckery, an image to mess with his mind and put him at odds with someone he cares about.

"Zayn, please."

He glares, sends a look that warns his band mate to keep his mouth shut because he can't be in denial if it isn't the truth in the first place.

And it isn't because Liam wouldn't do such a thing. Zayn knows it without a shadow of a doubt. If anyone were to break that kind of promise between the two of them, it'd be him because he's more of a failure of the two; he knows it good and well and if there ever comes a point, he's decided, where they break up, Zayn will take the fall so that Liam will continue to shine as brightly as he can because that's how it is between the two and how it will remain after Zayn is long gone, be it death of their relationship or six feet within the ground.

"I'm only-" Niall tries but is silenced by an even harsher glare, if that's even possible, and it is for Zayn, with his dark rimmed eyes and angled bone structure that would most certainly have woman calling him a bitch were his gender different.

Zayn walks away and doesn't speak of the incident until it's brought up again one night in the dressing room, only this time it's Louis.

"Zayn, are you sure mate?"