There's a knock on the door, and Zayn sighs but manages to pull himself up from the couch. He checks through the peephole and chuckles when he sees a shock of bottle brunette hair through the lens.
"Babe, you've really got to start remembering your key," he laughs, greeting his boyfriend with a kiss, and Liam smiles against his lips.
"Or maybe you should just start leaving the door unlocked," he retorts because Liam has forgotten his key enough times to make that a viable option. Zayn just picks Liam up and twirls him, happy to have his boyfriend home after a long day of work.
"And open our home to sketchy Bradford heathens? No thank you. Think of all the potential youths running in and out," he replied, and Liam looked at him seriously –and maybe a bit bewildered- for a moment before throwing his head back and laughing.
"What are you even talking about?" he asks, and Zayn shrugs because he only said it to hear Liam laugh again and maybe only slightly out of fear for all their possessions being stolen.
"Never you mind it. Let's just have dinner, okay? You, me, and the cheapest wine the off-license has to offer?" he asked, and Liam didn't answer, just kissed him and moved off to their bedroom to change out of his work clothes.
God, did Zayn love Liam.
"Shit, babes?!"
Zayn groans as Liam's voice calls out for him. It's too early and Zayn had gone to bed too late. However, Zayn's never been one to not come when Liam called, so he peeled himself off his bed and found his boyfriend in the bathroom, tie tangled around his neck and shoulders and fingers knotted up in it by his neck. He snickered. "And what happened here?" he asked, leaning up against the doorframe, and Liam flushed.
"I can't… I can't remember how I'm supposed to do this," he answered, and he's pouting a little bit with his eyes opened up huge, and Zayn coos a little internally because his boyfriend is just so absolutely adorable and forlorn.
"Here, baby, lemme help you," he offered, stepping into the room a little more. He freed Liam's hands from where they were trapped up in his tie and looped the thing over his head to get it untangled before restringing it around the boy's neck. "Okay, hold on, I can only do this from one side," he said, and moved around Liam so his back was flush to his chest and reached his arms around the brown hairede's shoulders to tie his tie from the only angle he knew how. "All set," he said when he finished, planting a kiss to the corner of Liam's jaw. His boyfriend smiled.
"Thanks. I just had the worst mental blank," he said with a small laugh. Zayn cracked a smile because, yes, Liam was a little spacy, but as far as he was concerned, it was one of the most adorable things in the world. He'd wake up to help Liam remember how to tie his tie any day if that was the cost of keeping him.
"It's cute. You're cute," he promises, and with that, Liam has to be off to work. Zayn spanks him as he passes, and Liam yelps, brown eyes sparkling, and somewhere there's the promise of this being forever and Liam always being his, and Zayn doesn't need to be awake for another hour still, but he stays up anyway because he's too happy to fall asleep.
________________________________________
Zayn's a worried mess. Liam was supposed to just be picking up milk for tea, but he'd been gone an hour and a half. He'd tried his mobile only to hear ringing from somewhere in the flat, and he usually doesn't mind how forgetful his boyfriend can be, but he's cursing it now. If only had had remembered his phone. Zayn just wanted to know if he was okay.
He's pacing back and forth when the phone rings. Zayn almost doesn't answer because the caller ID doesn't say a person; it just says "unavailable" and he normally doesn't pick up for those calls. The only thing is that Liam is all but missing, and maybe this is important.
