Walking In the Wind // 1D AU ✓

Chapter 14

~Yesterday I went out to celebrate the birthday of a friend,

But as we raised our glasses up to make a toast,

I realized you were missing~

AUGUST 28/29TH

Zayn raised his fist and confidently pounded on Simon's door, letting his fingers drag down to the knob. He turned it before there could be a response; his thin frame slid inside and slammed it shut. "You could have just sent me an email," Simon was sitting in an utterly dark room, a washcloth over his forehead.

"Is that because you don't want visitors or because you have a hangover?"

"Yes," Simon did a sarcastic thumbs up. "What, Zayn?"

"It's Liam's birthday tomorrow."

"No." He dismissed the comment not because it was incorrect, because he knew what he was really asking. Zayn wanted permission to leave the house, and to take his other friends. "You're not leaving with only three days until the job!"

"Dinner and drinks. Two and a half hours. We'll even take Hailee if you're worried." Resolve crumbling already, Zayn sat in the open chair. "I had to do some secret hacking to even find out that its tomorrow! He doesn't think that anything will happen because we're under house arrest, and he needs something special." There was the unspoken message of the fact that Zayn was his boyfriend and therefore needed to do this - to fight for a night out.

"No," Insistent laced the words. "The stakes are too high." Zayn frowned, feeling like he failed at what should have been a simple task. "But," Hope immediately blossomed. "I'll send someone out to get whatever you want, if you decide to have a party."

Now there was something that he hadn't thought of. With a smile on his lips, Zayn raced out of the room to go and draw up a list before his boss inevitably passed out from the pain or it became too late in the day to get everything that he wanted. Everything couldn't happen fast enough - he was waiting for his Untitled Google Doc to load while untangling his earbuds, hoping that inspiration would strike him and words would flow onto the page.

There was no way that it couldn't be a surprise party. Liam was already trying to downplay his birthday since the job was less than a week away - Zayn only found out about it because Liam tended to tell all of his secrets right before he fell asleep. And well, his bed was just so much comfier.

After listing all of the typical birthday decorations and some of Liam's favorite snacks, he wrote down the thing that he should have put down first - "Alcohol. Lots of alcohol."

---

The house, as it had been for the past week, was a frenzy of activity from the early morning. There was the sound of gunshots going off in the backyard - Simon had assured the neighbors that it was just his nephews playing with BB guns. But it definitely wasn't his nephews - he didn't have any, not that the neighbors would know - and those definitely weren't BB guns that Hailee and Palmer were shooting.