ZIAM ONE-SHOTS (BOTTOM LIAM)

Can't Hold Us 3: Climax Section B

Liam gets home—somehow. He doesn't really remember the bus ride or the woman who asked if he was all right...but he gets home and everything is a blur, slowly fading in and out of focus, like the edges of everything he sees can't quite center. It's still raining, but he barely feels it. Can't feel it. He just draws his key from his pocket and trudges up the stairs to his flat, every footstep a burden. He focuses on the little things like walking and unlocking the door. It takes him three attempts because he can't see the key slot the first two, but he manages it. Somehow. Inside, there's the smell of food cooking and his family talking but he walks past it all, able to think of only one thing: getting to his room. If he can just get to his room, everything will be okay. The door looms closer and closer, the only thing he can see, the only thing he wants to see. If he sees his mum, he'll break and he can't do that now. He can't open himself up to anyone else right now because it makes it real and he can't do that right now. He can't, he can't, he can't. The door opens, it closes, and he's inside. Safe. Okay. Alone.

And he has no idea what the hell to do now.

In the dark, it all feels so much closer. In the dark, he's not around people who can watch him. In the dark, there's nothing to concentrate on. In the dark, all Liam can see are the tears on Zayn's face and the shape of his mouth forming the words "leave me alone." The numbness that he's has been carrying around tears instantly to form a stabbing sense of loss that reaches up from his belly to his throat and sucks him under.

He's able to make it to his bed before he starts crying and clutches his pillow, curling in on it, still able to smell Zayn's cologne on it, leftover from the night they shared here.

It just makes it worse, so much worse.

Liam cries until he can't any more and just lies there, spent, feeling heavy from the weight of it all and yet hollow, fragile, as if he'll fall apart with the next breath he takes. Or maybe the next. Or the next. Or the next. He keeps trying to process it but it's too big to fit into his reality—he doesn't want to fit it in and that makes it worse. He doesn't want to accept that he's now just Liam instead of LiamandZayn and—and—and the pain is staggering, overwhelming, huge.

In his pocket, his mobile buzzes, making his heart leap. Liam claws it from the sodden inside, hope a solid thing clogging his throat. That changes instantly when he sees the caller display and can confirm who it's not. He answers it woodenly.

"Harry."

"Liam, hi. You all right?"

It's a simple question that Liam doesn't know how to answer. Is he all right? Is he all right? He doesn't even know what all right is right now. His eyes sting with new tears that he, manfully, tries to swallow down.

"Why do you care?"

Harry makes a surprised noise. "What do you mean, why do I care?"

"Why do you care?" Liam repeats. "You made it pretty clear that you don't care about me tonight."

"I—" Harry huffs. "I'm so sorry, Li. I just—we've—never seen Zayn upset like that. We needed to get him home."

Liam wants to scream at him. He wants to throw things. He wants to hurt him like he's been hurt. He wants to do so much...and he's too tired to do any of it, too deeply rooted in the everything that it seems like too much of an effort. Even if he wants to ask if they thought how he might be getting home, even if he wants to remind Harry that what happened happened to him too. He knows he's being petulant, he knows he's being a twat but hasn't he earned it? Isn't he allowed to be, after everything that has happened? He doesn't want to be all put together and fine. He wants to be just as human as they all are and let his cracks show.