Summary: In which Liam finds a poem Zayn's written and gets a line tattooed and there's Lots of Feelings
By: Ghostinghearts.archiveofourown.org
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The first time it happens, the first time Zayn's words leave a mark on Liam's skin, it's by accident.
It's nearly midnight and they're in a van somewhere in Paris, strung out and tired from what has felt like an infinite number of plane rides. It's silent, a brief calm in the storm that usually involves Louis giving Harry cheeky slaps on the bum and Niall cheering whenever he wins a round of Angry Birds on his phone or Zayn complaining about the noise and the usual rounds of “get off of me you twit!”
It's nothing but the lull of the car underneath the moonlight, and it's just them, Liam and Zayn, and they're still. Not that Liam and Zayn aren't always still, not that they don't always have a quietness about them, but Liam is sort of burrowed into Zayn's neck and he's drifting from the motion of the car, and Zayn's scribbling something in the pages of a book under the artificial yellow-orange hues of streetlamps and it just. Feels different. It's languid and slow, Liam can't keep his eyes open and all he remembers before drifting off completely is the feeling of ink on his arm, cold but soft.
He wakes up when they arrive at the hotel, bleary-eyed and for some reason Zayn doesn't look at him, just pushes out of the van and shoves his hands into his pocket and hurries inside into the welcoming warmth and light of the hotel lobby.
Liam doesn't notice the blue on his arm until he's in the shower. He fingers it and a word runs down his finger, hope, Liam thinks it says, but it disappears down the drain, staining the shower ring a metallic-blue and the rest of his arm becomes a faded blur until it washes out completely.
So Liam doesn't really notice, per say, but he stores it in the back of his mind, tucks it away gently and quietly and it becomes another secret, another detail of Zayn Liam fails to figure out.
(Maybe Liam should have said something, maybe he shouldn't have left all this empty space in the air, unnamed and undefinable in between them, but it's left unsaid and Liam wakes up from a dream that's foggy but all he remembers is hurried want and touch that's too much.)
//
It's a few weeks later and Zayn's more irritable than usual, even shoving Niall away when he offers a cuddle. There's something wrong but Liam can't put his finger on it. There are bags underneath Zayn's eyes—the skin underneath them nearly translucent—and it takes at least a half pack of cigarettes for Zayn's hands to stop shaking. And he leaves them everywhere, some of them burnt down to the edge and some of them still unlit, leaving traces of his anxiety in tar-smoke and the smudged blue and black of bitten pens.
Like clockwork, Zayn runs a shaky hand through his hair before mumbling “Cigarette” and escaping to the balcony. It sounds heavy in Liam's ears, the word, the synonym for tar and smoke and gray, and it's like Zayn is running away from something. Niall frowns and Louis rolls his eyes and Harry sighs, eyes rising up briefly to meet Liam's. Harry looks like he's trying to tell Liam something, only he doesn't know how, and chooses instead to plop heavily on the couch before letting Louis run his hands softly through his hair. There's an unusual tenderness about them in that moment, something thick and potent in the air that even Liam notices. Usually they're all heat and fire, usually they're stars burnt out from sparkling too much from the constant battle that is Harry-and-Louis. It makes Liam achy, and for some reason it reminds him of brown-tinted-gold and the blues and blacks of Zayn.
//
So Liam doesn't call it snooping, really, but he's in Zayn's hotel room looking for his cardigan when he sees the journal on the floor. To be fair, it's open and just laying there, almost offering itself up to be read, and Liam glances over his shoulder before taking a tentative step towards it. He can't help but feel like he's breaking the rules, bending sacred law. It's strange, though, this idea of secrets between them. They know everything about each other, down to the little quirks and nuances that make each other tick.
