Just the two of us and a cute little cup of cyanide

ch 3

It's been eight weeks since Liam unofficially moved in and Zayn is stressed.

Because Liam is living with him and being with him all the time is just making Zayn more endeared, as if he wasn't already. The way Liam's eyes crinkle up happily when Zayn compliments his cooking, the way he sits with Zayn while he sketches late into the night, the way it just feels natural.

Not only that, but Liam has this terribly wonderful habit of getting shirtless now that it's summer. On top of the going jogging most mornings and coming back sweaty and ripped and beautiful, Zayn is starting to think he may have to move out.

Liam goes round to his house and comes back with a load of his things and moves them into his spare room. He sets up pictures to make it more his own and gradually his stuff starts spreading around the flat like it's his own, which it kind of is. He starts doing the weekly shops and sees what meals Zayn likes to eat, cooking them when Zayn comes home from his longer days.

"I need your bank details," he asks him one day over breakfast. Zayn raises an eyebrow over his bowl of Coco Pops. "I'm not going to rob you, idiot. I need to start paying half the rent."

"Liam, no..." Zayn starts, but Liam holds up his hand.

"Just until I work out what I'm doing. It's only fair."

--

"What the fuck is he doing?" Niall asks over lunch that day when Zayn goes to meet him and Harry in the studio. "So he's your permanent roommate now or what?"

"I don't even know," Zayn whines, flicking a piece of lettuce across the table. "Like he's just there, and he's not with Sophia anymore and we're still technically husbands and nothing has changed. But everything has."

"Shit," Niall says dumbly. "Well maybe you should just seduce him."

Both Zayn and Harry choke on their sandwiches.

"What?" they both say incredulously. Niall shrugs.

"Get the ball rolling, you know? Make it all sunshine and rainbows and semen in the Malik-Payne household."

"Niall," Harry huffs exasperatedly as he gives him a clip round the ear. "Liam wouldn't know seduction if it crawled into his lap and bit him. Besides, he's acting too much like he's fine. Louis says he's been doing this since he was a kid. He's like a nervous ball of pretend happy energy but one day it's just going to sink in on itself."

"Fucking fabulous," Zayn mutters, chucking his crusts back onto his plate. "I am not seducing him, Niall. He is definitely not in the right headspace for another relationship, let alone a relationship with one of his best mates and a bloke on top of that. He's been with a woman his whole life, he's probably going to stick with women forever."

"And yet he married a man," Niall says solemnly, giving Zayn an intense stare. Zayn ignores him and steals his crisps.

Sophia and Liam don't seem to talk anymore and Zayn is grateful because the distance seems to be doing him the world of good. Slowly but surely, Liam is being less reliant on his phone, more reluctant to come home early from nights out and just more like the chilled, happy Liam Zayn had met in university. He thinks he likes this Liam a lot more.

Little does he know that Liam is actually not at all calm and starting to freak the fuck out.

He spent the first few days of living with Zayn moping, going and collecting some of his stuff and letting Zayn and the other boys dote on him and tell him he was better off without her. He needed to hear it all, really he did but that's when he started to notice the little things.