Ziam one shots

The Difference Between Knowing and Knowing

By: luxover
Summary:
"They say I'm in a band," Liam tells his mom. He squeezes his eyes shut, his phone pressed tight against his ear. "I don't even remember any of it." In which Liam gets temporary amnesia and forgets things even more important than the fact that he's in a band.

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Liam wakes up with his head feeling like it's threatening to split in two.

"Um," he tries to say, although afterwards he's not entirely sure that he was very successful. His mouth is dry and the room is too bright, and his head is just absolutely killing him, making him feel ill; he raises a hand, shields his eyes as he looks around, and he's not in a hospital, or at his house, or anywhere that he recognizes. Instead, he's on a couch in what looks like someone's caravan, and he's suddenly terrified.

There's a blond boy sitting on the armrest near Liam's feet, an open packet of crisps in his lap as he plays a game on his phone, and Liam finds that comforting, somehow, because he doesn't look like the type of person who would whack Liam over the head and then kidnap him.

Liam shifts, pokes at the boy's leg with his toe and then immediately wishes he could take it back; he wonders why he even did it in the first place when it's so unlike him.

"Oh, hey," the boy says when he looks up. "You're awake." Then he stands up, places the packet of crisps in Liam's lap, and says, "Here. Let me go get the lads, yeah? Zayn's been losing his head over this." And before Liam can even ask what's going on, the boy crosses the room, sticks his had out the door, and shouts, "Oi! He's awake!" The loudness of it just makes Liam's head pound more, and he winces.

Then, from behind his head, another voice says, "I don't think you're supposed to shout around people with head traumas, you know," and Liam has to crane his neck to see who's even talking this time. It's another boy, about Liam's age and with a mop of curly hair, and he's standing by a set of bunks. A bus; Liam's not on a caravan, he's on a bus, and that is so unexpected that it almost feels impossible. That, if anything, keeps Liam from panicking: he's almost sure he's dreaming.

"Uh. What the hell is going on?" Liam finally asks.

"A bit of the stage design fell on you," the second boy says, and then the blond adds, "Don't worry—doctor said you might not remember."

That doesn't help Liam at all, doesn't explain a thing, but before he can even sort it all out, the door to the bus opens and two more boys pile in.

"Our Zayn was in a bit of a rush to get here," the one in suspenders says, smiling and jerking his chin to the boy with darker skin and darker hair.

"Shut it, Louis," Zayn says. At least, Liam can only assume that's Zayn. The way he looks at Liam makes Liam feel a bit out of sorts, and so Liam just sits up and darts his eyes around the bus.

"We're back in New York," the blond boy says, and Liam thinks, Back in New York? What on Earth am I doing in New York?

But instead of asking that, Liam decides that he needs to get the important part out of the way, and so he says, "Who are you?"

"Cheeky," Louis says, laughing, but when Zayn reaches out to put a hand on Liam's shoulder and Liam shrinks back a bit, everything falls silent. Liam would think that he just did something wrong, but he doesn't know what that could possibly be; he doesn't actually know these people enough to have offended them by that.

"I think we might have a bit of a problem," the curly-haired one says, and Liam realizes that maybe all of this is real. It's only then that the panic really sets in for him, and suddenly it's like he can't breathe, and his head is pounding and he doesn't know what's going on and his shirt is just too tight around the collar and the room is way too hot and—