Viva La Vida

Part 23

Liam wakes up not able to breathe. His lungs are shriveled, deflated bags in his decaying chest, but his heart is racing like it can singlehandedly make up for his lack of oxygen. It's a good two minutes before he can catch his breath, and even then he has to wait for a few more waves of panic to wash over him before he can open his eyes.

Zayn isn't on his side of the mattress.

Liam's lungs abruptly stop working again.

When he calms down enough to move, he reaches out to touch the empty sheets and finds a faintly warm, Zayn-shaped dent in the mattress, which is calming—wherever Zayn is, he can't be too far from here. When he calms down enough to think, he remembers that these days Zayn is rarely in physical danger, and is probably just fine. It's totally normal to wake up and get out of bed without wanting to wake up your boyfriend. It doesn't mean you're lying dead or worse in a ditch somewhere.

Liam wonders when exactly he'd started having panic attacks like this. Probably around the same time he'd realized that there are much, much worse things than being dead.

He swings his feet out of bed and heads to the bathroom, where he knows Zayn probably is. His heart is still racing, still trying to compensate for his lungs' moment of weakness, and he knows the only thing that will slow it is physical, real confirmation that Zayn is alive and in one piece.

Sure enough, when he pushes the door open without bothering to knock, Zayn is in the bathroom brushing his teeth in two days of stubble and no shirt; his body is scarred and skinny but reassuringly unbloodied. Their eyes meet in the mirror briefly, Zayn swiftly taking in Liam's expression before his hand shoots out to encircle Liam's wrist, squeezing hard until Liam doesn't know whose pulse is whose anymore. They stand like that until Zayn leans over to spit toothpaste foam into the sink and then turns to face Liam.

"I'm here," he says. "I'm fine."

"I know." It strikes Liam that those words are for Zayn's benefit as much as his; the same goes for the lack of a shirt. Zayn needs to check that he's unhurt just as much Liam does.

"Bad dream?"

"Woke up feeling panicky," Liam says, which is nothing short of a gross understatement, but Zayn knows that. "You?"

Zayn shrugs expressively. "You know. One of those mornings."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Lost some time earlier."

Liam raises an eyebrow.

"I was standing over by the window earlier," Zayn explains. "No idea in hell how or why I got there. I'm guessing I had a bad dream, woke up in a panic, and my mind just—" He snaps his fingers "—blanked out. Which—you know. Always nice to know my head still has a self-destruct button. Anyway, I just got back in bed. No point in losing sleep if I'm losing my memory too. Gotta keep what I can, right?"

"Don't be so dramatic," Liam says, a note of warmth in his voice, and Zayn huffs out a laugh. "It'll stop happening eventually. All the doctors say so."

"I, for one, can't wait for it to be eventually." Zayn squeezes Liam's wrist one more time and then lets go to turn around and pick up his razor and shaving cream. "Your panicky feeling have anything to do with today?"

"What's—ah. No. I only just remembered."

"And they say it's not possible to forget unpleasant things. You are full of wonders, Your Majesty."