Smile

six; red fuzzy blankets

SMILE - ZIAM
PART SIX; RED FUZZY BLANKETS
WORDS: 970
CHAPTER SONG: HOLD ME BY TOM ODELL
WARNINGS: VERY MILD, INFREQUENT COARSE LANGUAGE

"What the hell was that for?!" Liam shouts, his hand instinctively rushing up to hold his cheek.

"Let go all of this, okay?" Zayn advises, having, (in one way or another) transferred his anger over to the other boy. Liam nearly wants to slap Zayn back for how calm he's being.

"All right," Liam allows, surrendering. "I can't tell you how to live your life."

"No, you can't." Zayn nods, "Like, you seriously can't."

"I won't."

Zayn crosses his arms and stares at the infernal beetroot sandwich on the table, like it's done something incredibly illegal and Zayn's a police officer who's had a very tiring and emotional day already and he doesn't need this. "Okay." he says, softly but Liam can still hear. He reaches forward for the piece of food, taking it in his hands and he's starting to unwrap it from the plastic covering it.

"Okay?" Liam asks, dumbstruck - his mouth hanging open.

"I'll eat the goddamn sandwich."

10:30PM

Liam's currently trying to dial some emergency numbers on his phone and it's really rather distracting for the writing boy, all huddled up in a booth with a red blanket draped over his shoulders and another hot chocolate on the wooden table in front of him, on top of a drinks coaster with a picture of the London Eye on it. The remains of Zayn's sandwich (tiny little crumbs left on the table's surface) are scattered, and to an extent, so is his mind. He still manages to block those confusing and threatening thoughts out, though, because he's been doing it all his life and he's never let his guard down before.

(Well, once.)

(Twice.)

(A lot.)

But to Zayn's surprise, Liam had offered him all the comforts he was able to offer in return for eating the sandwich - this had never happened to Zayn before. It's always been, "I can't believe you can't eat, you twat. It's easy," rather than Liam's approach, which was a bit of, "congratulations," a bit of "that was brave," and an ever-lasting amount of "thank you"s.

It was kind of cute. In a Liam sort of way.

"Any luck?" Zayn says, looking up from his hot chocolate, "Any signal happening?"

"Nah," Liam sighs, and then smiles a little, weakly, "Network's down."

"Quite a snow storm we've got here, then." Zayn sips on his chocolate from a little mug that Liam obviously brought from home and thus has custody of. (It's got a picture of a little husky dog on it and Zayn's sure that it'd be adorable in any way.)

Liam just echoes a small, "Yeah, I guess," before taking his own seat next to Zayn, and their eyes meet for a small second, but Zayn wishes that it'd been longer. "Can we share the blanket?" Liam asks, suddenly shy and not at all like the Liam that he was when he didn't seem to care about personal space, or lack thereof.

Zayn quirks an eyebrow at the request but fills it nonetheless, lifting up one of his arms to allow Liam the huddle underneath the red, fuzzy sheet with him. "This is nice," the Bradford boy whispers, his mouth near Liam's tufts of brown hair that are sticking in all directions since Liam keeps pulling at it.

"I guess," Liam shrugs, "Sorry about being a díck."

"That's okay," Zayn says as he feels an arm snake around his waist, his breath hitching, "I- I'm used to it, I g-guess."

Liam hums in response, and Zayn turns to face him, and it's then when he realizes just how close they are. (But the problem is that he's not uncomfortable at all.) "Really," Liam says, solemn, and reaches one of his hands up to brush a discarded strand from Zayn's jet-black, overgrown fringe. "I'm so sorry,"

To say that Zayn's brain was going a bit mental is an understatement, because his eyes have started doing the thing when they dart around the place and he's having a bit of trouble breathing but he breathes through his nose, and out his mouth, and then he smiles because that tactic seems to work pretty well for Liam.

"I forgive you," Zayn whispers, and his eyes flick to Liam's lips, (which are only, like, three inches away). "Um... Are you, er, gay, Liam?" he blurts out, and he nearly scolds himself out loud, but instead bites his bottom lip.

(No way did he just ask that.)

Liam moves backward slightly, understandably taken aback by the sudden question. "I- yeah." he tells Zayn with a questionable look on his face. Zayn can't quite tell what he's questioning, though.

"Really?"

"Yeah,"

Zayn turns his face so he's back to looking wistfully in the bottom of his mug. "So am I," he says, into his scarf more than to the Wolverhampton boy.

"Really?"

"Yeah,"

Zayn might just have to worry a whole lot about this later, but for now he's directing all his concentration into not freaking out. He doesn't know what he may or may not be freaking out about, but he knows that he can't have two panic attacks in the one night, that'd just be annoying.

((author's note: hi it's juliet here, & zen is so wrong rn. it's ok to not be ok. zen needs to accept lili's support. stay strong x))

He moves so he's sitting with his knees tugged tight to his chest, and he's facing the fair-skinned boy again. When he moves, he disrupts the way that the blanket is precariously curtained over the two boys and it ends up completely covering them from head to toe since Liam crawls forward at the wrong (or possibly the right) time. All of Zayn's vision is glowing red due to the light refraction through the crimson material, and it's kind of burning, but it's also kind of nice.

Liam takes a breath, and Zayn has a pretty good idea of what's coming, so he takes a breath too.

Liam kisses him.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:
they kissed! so, zayn is picking up on liam's coping strategies - not only picking up on them but incorporating them. yay for relationship progress.

QUESTION OF THE CHAPTER:
Why did Zayn eat the sandwich once the choice to reject it was given to him? Also, bonus question: Why is Liam acting differently?