The Way It Is ! ** Ziam

Part 2

This time he wakes to the opening lines of Call Me Maybe. God, he hates that fucking song, and now it's going to be stuck in his head all damn day. Groaning, he rolls over and blindly searches around on the bedside table for his phone, which is now blaring "Hot night, wind was blowin'; where you think you're going, baby?" and vibrating across the wood top of the table. Seriously, if a song could be stabbed, he would take the biggest, sharpest knife to this one. After Harry's two-month long obsession with it a few months back, he can't stand it. But it wasn't his choice to make it his ringtone.

As soon as he presses talk, he gets a loud, "Hey, baby!"

"Hey," Zayn mumbles back.

There's a pause. "I didn't wake you, did I? Shit, I'm so lost when it comes to time zones. What time is it there?"

Zayn pulls the phone away from his ear. "Just after nine." They have an interview scheduled for three, which means that, for the first time in two weeks, he gets to sleep in, uninterrupted, in his own bed (not on the tour bus) without someone screaming outside the window. Or he did, but now that he's awake he has a feeling he won't get back to sleep.

"Sorry," Perrie says, and he knows she means it because she gets it. "I'll call you back. You get some—"

"'s that Perrie?" Liam asks from beside him.

Zayn tenses and closes his eyes. Liam. He forgot Liam was here, somehow. He kind of chalked last night up to a dream, something he'd invented that didn't really happen. But Liam is right there, his ankle brushing against Zayn, his left cheek red from his pillow and his eyes all droopy with sleep. Shit.

"Who's that?" Perrie demands, and the words chill him to the bone. She doesn't get testy often, Perrie —that's one of the reasons Zayn likes her, how laid back and relaxed she always is— but when she does, she's like the arctic. So cold it's actually painful. And, in a clipped, calm tone, she asks, "Is that Liam?"

"Tell her I said hello," Liam offers with an almost pinched look on his face, and Zayn wants to tell him that he's so not helping the situation, but he knows that doing so will only bring a lot of unwelcome questions that he can't really answer, so he doesn't.

"God," Perrie practically shouts, "I just wanted to talk to you for, like, five minutes but — no, you know what, forget it. Call me back when you're not in bed with someone else, okay?" The line goes dead.

The thing is, it'd be different if it were one of the others. In fact, the two of them have had lengthy, in-depth conversations while Zayn was lying in Niall's bed, or Harry's (not Louis', but only because Louis gets annoyed when anyone is on the phone around him because "It's rude, Zayn, call her back.") and it's never a problem. But it's Liam and, as always in Zayn's life, things are just different when it comes to Liam. And Perrie seems to get that, the way she gets everything else. Only for once that's not a good thing.

"That was a short call," Liam comments as he stretches, head rolling back, mouth falling open in a yawn. When he straightens himself, he asks, "What'd she want?"

"She just called to say good morning," Zayn lies, the words slipping out of his mouth easily, believably, leaving Liam none the wiser.

"Oh." Liam swings his legs out of bed. "I should probably get out of here. Shower. I feel like shit."

"Hungover," Zayn guesses. Liam nods. "Speaking of, last night you said you had to tell me something important."

Liam frowns at him. "I did?"

"That was apparently the reason for you even being here right now," Zayn adds.

"Huh." Liam shrugs. "I can't remember. Guess it wasn't that important." He winces. "I really do need to shower though, so I'll see you later."