A Bed With Six Legs
A Bed With Six Legs
Zayn/Danny/Anthony gen, with Zayn/Danny, Zayn/Anthony, Zayn/Danny/Anthony, ot5, and Zayn/Perrie | 6308 words | R
Warnings: implied and actual threesomes including incest, recreational drug use, unrequited feelings, and fluttery prose.
A/N: This is a story about how Zayn has always been Danny and Ant’s, and how sometimes sharing is hard (and sometimes it’s easy). Now with a playlist (thanks lousmalik, you're an angel!) [AO3]
Zayn’s always been theirs.
;
Not- technically not always. Not when he was this shiny new thing with a foot barely in the door, smiling shyly across the circle during warmups- Peter piper picked a peck of- and then pairing up with Danny to run lines. There’s a first for everything, really.
;
Danny has most of them. Most of the firsts, that is. Ant’s okay with this, because he and Zayn have their own firsts, and he’s never been jealous of Danny in that way. And Zayn was Danny’s to begin with, anyhow, it’s a fact, like that the only bits the two of them will never have of Zayn are for those four boys who share a stage with him every night.
Then again, it wouldn’t make as long a list if Danny and Ant were to split the things that are theirs individually, highlight the lines that don’t overlap. Danny’s never really known how to be selfish with his little brother, not when he’s the older one, the strong one, the man of the house. Danny’s never known not to share the things that make him happy with the one person who depends on him most.
And Zayn is easy to share.
;
Ant knows that Danny was Zayn's first everything. He was there, wasn't he? If anyone knows, it's him. He remembers Danny and Zayn coming home from school, remembers peeking around the doorframe to see them doing homework in Danny's room on the carpet, Zayn reading out lines from a paper, Danny mangling math equations, remembers when he peeked around the door frame and they weren't reading papers or doing math, when Danny had his hands in Zayn's short, buzzed hair and Zayn was making breathless, surprised noises against his brother's mouth.
He remembers, too, an afternoon when they closed the door, and after, when Danny was washing his hands in the bathroom, how he looked over at Ant, always leaning in the doorway, and said, "You know you can't tell mum, right?"
And Ant knew, and Danny ruffled his hair and pushed past him to take a flannel back to his room for Zayn.
;
Danny isn’t sure if Zayn would know if he didn’t tell him, so he does, because Danny is seemingly afraid of nothing, even the things that would tear most people in half. “You know Ant likes you, yeah?” he says, and doesn’t pull away from Zayn, leaves them tangled loosely together on his bed in the lazy afternoon sunlight. Danny thinks that everyone likes Zayn, thinks the entire world is a little in love with him because how could they not be? But he knows that Zayn doesn’t always see it.
Zayn curls his fingers into the sheets, pushes his fisted hand at Danny’s side. “I like him, too.”
;
Looking back, Ant thinks, maybe in the beginning he only wanted Zayn (in every way, not just sex, because nothing about them is just sex, it's always more than that or it wouldn't work) because Danny wanted him. He wasn't... jealous, didn't want to take Zayn from Danny; it was just how he knew that he should want Zayn. Because anything Danny loved and wanted, Ant knew was worth it.
But he’s seen Zayn since the beginning, since the blind faith and not-quite jealousy. He’s heard Zayn sing, and if that isn’t enough to fall in love with him, there’s a hundred other reasons that could fill the need just as easily.
;
Zayn has to go on tour, is the thing, with these four bright and loud and crazy and wonderful new people wedged between his ribs, pressed in close to him like they never really got out of that pile-up of blankets and pillows and boy that week in Cheshire. And as much as he’s (dauntingly, permanently) theirs in ways he’s only been Danny and Ant’s before, he knows this isn’t something he can give up so easily, like maybe there’s enough of Ant and Danny in him that pulls him back, that pushes the words up his throat and out of his mouth.
Danny has always been just that bit bigger and bolder and steadier, and he can settle Zayn’s stomach with a single look, that serious yet fond glance that’s been reserved for Ant since the day he was born, and for Zayn since the day he slunk into his shadow going down the hall of grade school. It’s always made Zayn feel special, a gift not won by right of blood or conquest, but simply bestowed out of affection. Danny is generosity and loyalty and fierce, unwavering belief, and Zayn envies him for all that he is, but never as much as he loves him for it.
So it’s Danny, because it’s always been Danny, and Zayn can’t, at seventeen, picture a world where it won’t be Danny forever. (Even if it isn’t, Zayn knows with absolute certainty, seventeen or not, that he will never regret it having been Danny.)
;
“I don’t wanna go on tour, like.” Zayn swallows, wraps his arms tighter around his knees. He’s in the middle of Danny’s bed, Danny stretched on his side reading over some notes for his exam the next week, and Zayn feels the distance between them already. And he hasn’t even packed yet. “Don’ wanna go like this.”
Danny keeps his eyes on his notes because Zayn’s wearing a hoodie he had never seen before, and he’s allowed to be childish sometimes. He is. “What d’you mean like this?”
“Like,” Zayn mutters, and fists his hands in the cuffs of the hoodie that smells too much like judges’ house and a boy he doesn’t know quite what to think of just yet. “It’s just, everyone always talks shit about their- sex stuff, and it’ll be worse on tour.”
And Danny has to look up at that, because- because he wonders sometimes if Zayn’s told about them, if maybe Zayn has made up people but all of them, in the end, are Danny; if he’s given new names and faces to the times on Saturday nights in the dark of Zayn’s bedroom, quiet so his sisters wouldn’t hear. “Y’mean like. Like, you wanna shag someone else so you can tell ‘em, yeah?”
Zayn flinches, “No, no, not- It’s not, like, about telling them.” He considers, for a moment, thinks of Louis’ expectant eyes and Harry’s sympathetic eyes and Niall’s laughter and Liam. Reconsiders, and tries to speak slowly enough that the words work their way out in the right order, in spite of his frantic pulse. “Maybe it is, a bit? But I just- I don’t think any of ‘em haven’t, y’know? An’ I don’t wanna be the only one.”
That clicks, though, for Danny (accompanied with a small surge of relief that he still gets Zayn even when he doesn’t make much sense, and that, if Zayn’s really implying what Danny thinks he is, he gets Zayn, too, before anyone else). “So like, you want.”
Licking his lips and letting go of the worn red cuff half-covering his hand, Zayn nods. “I. Yeah. Please?”
Danny moves slowly, rolling onto his side and then pushing himself up until he’s cross-legged in front of Zayn, rubs at his skinny ankle where it pokes out from the hem of ragged pajama pants. “We can, like. Talk about it? What you want.” He crinkles his forehead up with a sudden thought, and presses his thumb into the soft spot above Zayn’s heel. “Y’know you don’t hafta impress ‘em, yeah?” Danny still isn’t completely sure about the dynamic these four boys have brought into Zayn’s life; whether they’re pulling him out of his shell or just pulling it away from him. Every protective nerve in his body sings symphonies of rage at the thought that Zayn might be trying to make himself worthy of them, when he’s the most perfect person Danny’s ever met.
“‘s not about impressing them,” Zayn shakes his head, but he’s still shy and small enough that he keeps the real reason to himself.
It’s only the following day, when they have the house to themselves and Zayn is wrecked and beautiful and it’s overcast out and Danny wants to stay in that moment forever, that Zayn explains, plain and simple, “I just wanted you ‘fore anyone else could have me.”
Danny doesn’t know what to say to that, because Zayn and Ant are the ones who work with words, and he’s just the one who holds onto them, swallows their pretty words and keeps them close. So he does just that, and doesn’t forget.
;
i think i rlly mesedup :(
It’s four a.m. and Danny has been asleep for three and a half hours, has to be up in the same, has a match early and the only reason he even clicks the text open is because Zayn’s name is lit up ultra bright against the blackness of his room, urgent. y?? he sends back, fingers stumbling and eyes aching against the shine of his phone screen, r u k?
i snogged liam
Danny blinks and blinks again, rubs his thumb over the screen and exhales, rolls to his stomach and props up on his elbows to type easier. He starts a dozen texts and erases them all before sending. He can hear Zayn freaking out through the twelve letters of his message, knows it’s in the quiet, dangerous way that he freaks out when he’s not had enough sleep and he’s overthinking things. uh k what happned? he sends, finally, because Zayn will only panic more if he doesn’t respond, and follows it with a quick, why is that bad z r u ok?
It’s a few minutes before he gets anything back, and his chest constricts at the message, split in half.
idk hes gone 2 bed now but its weird cos im not sur he likes me like that nd i rly hope hes not gna ignore me... harry n louis are prty much 2gether but i dont think liam wants 2 b like tht..
Danny closes his eyes and thinks about his match and then sees Zayn in the dark space behind his eyelids. He exits his messages, presses dial. “Hey,” he whispers, when the line clicks on, and he knows his voice is rough and tell-tale sleepy, but he’s just thankful Zayn answered.
“Can’t talk for long,” Zayn whispers- Danny knows he’s been rooming with Niall, who apparently sleeps like a rock, but he doesn’t want to keep Zayn up either, busy schedule and all, being a pop star. “Hi.”
So Danny takes a breath and pushes back the tangle of nasty, sour things rising in his chest. “Listen, you’re- y’gonna be okay, yeah? You’re y’own person, y’not Harry or Louis an’ you can do this. Try to talk t’im tomorrow, Z, and whatever happens, I’ll. Be here when you get back. Y’hear?”
Zayn exhales noisily, and there’s rustling, like he’s twisting himself up in the covers. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “I just.”
Danny isn’t sure whether he can bear to hear whatever comes after that in Zayn’s head; he can imagine the possibilities all too clearly. But Zayn doesn’t finish, just takes a deep breath. “Thanks, Danny.”
“Love you, mate,” Danny rasps, a bit louder than a whisper, and Zayn makes a pleased sound in response, like he’s been waiting for it.
“Love you. G’night.”
Danny falls asleep on his phone and dreams of searching for something that he knows he has to protect. It stays just out of his reach.
;
Ant thinks he can feel them all under Zayn’s skin, like they’ve buried themselves in him just like the ink that traces out his own design on Zayn’s arm and the Arabic on his chest. He can feel it in the embrace they share when Zayn first comes through the door, the warmth and the familiarity and the weight of this new thing, growing and pushing itself up through his bones. And he’s known; texts and drunken calls and pictures, Zayn’s never tried to hide it from him- or Danny. But it’s different, the knowing and the seeing. The feeling.
It’s in the way that Zayn carries himself, now, and the settling of his shoulders as he crawls under the covers on his side of Ant’s bed, that first night back.
“W’missed you,” Ant says, a little afraid, unsure that Zayn will say it back.
But Zayn is radiating warmth, and it’s in that smile, too, the one Ant knows so well. “Missed home,” Zayn replies, and hopes Ant will get the implications, the way a lot of clothes in Zayn’s luggage may not be his and he may have new things to giggle at for no real reason, new in-jokes and ideas and experiences, but this is still where he came from and where he’ll always come back.
Zayn has bruised-dark circles under his eyes from jetlag, and his hair is damp, tufty, from his shower, but he’s still breathtaking to Ant, makes his chest ache a little with the relief and the want of having him this close. There’s barely a foot between them on the bed, and Ant exhales, clutches his arms tighter around himself. It’s strange, without Danny here- he’ll be back day after next, but it still feels wrong that Ant has Zayn to himself and Danny hasn’t even properly gotten to welcome him home. It makes Ant unsure of how far he can push, how much he can ask for.
“I snogged this girl at school,” he blurts out, in the end, and makes a face at himself.
The first important change, perhaps, is the way Zayn grins and pulls Ant in without restraint, crowds their chests and foreheads together, and. That’s a new habit. “She fit?” he asks, a foreign kind of curiosity spread across his features; and if it’s something Ant’s never seen before, well, it seems natural.
Ant grins a little, helpless in surprise. “Yeah? I mean, yeah. We’re not, like, seeing each other or anythin’. But yeah.” He squeezes Zayn’s arm and leans back. “‘d you, then? Snog any girls on your big tour, all popstar-like?”
“Once or twice, yeah, but like.” Zayn shrugs, picks at Ant’s sleeve absentmindedly and keeps his eyes down. “‘s not. No one I’ll see again, you know?”
Really, Ant doesn’t, but he nods all the same. Before he can think of anything clever to say- what to tell the person who plays sold out arenas is a question he’ll grow accustomed to, much like what to give the very same one who could buy anything he wanted- Zayn’s speaking again, casual and unaffected.
“Kissed some blokes, too.”
They’re still so close that Ant itches with the proximity, can feel Zayn’s body heat creeping into his own bones, and he shivers a little. “Yeah?”
Zayn’s face is unreadable, smoothed out from their shared laughter, his mouth full even as he draws his lower lip up between his teeth. Ant swallows and wonders how much of this Danny knows already, how much Zayn is saying for the first time. “Gonna see any of them again?” he asks, making himself look up to Zayn’s eyes again.
“I’m sort of stuck with ‘em, mate,” Zayn says, and that’s that.
;
Later, when they’ve turned the lights out and their bodies have drifted apart and Zayn’s eyelids are heavy and Ant itches so so badly to just reach out a few inches and brush his fingertips across Zayn’s lashes, only then does Zayn pick up Ant’s hand and line it up with his, mumble in a low rumble he must’ve picked up on the road, “I think I still like you best, though.”
Ant thinks about saying, I could kiss you all night, but Zayn has already fallen asleep.
;
Spring turns into summer, and summer grows late. Zayn is on break, another two days before he’s swept back up into the hurricane, and they watch Skins on the tiny telly set opposite Danny’s double bed.
And when Ant remembers, this is what he remembers first, brightest, always. Danny’s arm is slung over Zayn’s shoulder against the headboard, and Ant is spread out on his stomach next to Zayn’s legs, and Zayn’s already well on his way to things so much bigger than a school auditorium or his two favourite boys (still his favourite, always his favourite, even with the smells and clothes of four brand new people who love each other and love him and are here to take him away, no matter how great they may be).
He’s not sure why he looks over his shoulder in that split second. He wonders if it had been a second before or after, if he’d missed that single moment, if anything would’ve happened at all. It seems inevitable, but Ant just doesn’t know.
Zayn is leaning up to press his mouth to Danny’s upper lip, a smile blooming fresh and new in his cheeks, and Danny’s eyes are open and Ant looks away.
“Zayn,” Danny says, gently, and Zayn exhales, his legs moving under the covers, jostling Ant’s ribs.
“Ant, too,” Danny says, and that’s their first.
;
Zayn’s mouth is soft and full of tiny noises to search out under his tongue and behind his teeth. A lot of them are for Danny, but some of them are for Ant, too, and it’s a discovery that leaves him breathless.
It makes sense that Danny’s in charge, that he’s the one who gets to kiss Zayn deeper and dirtier than Ant’s ever seen before, and that he’s the one cupping his hands over Zayn’s ear and making Zayn nod, eyes fluttering closed.
“C’mere,” he says to Ant, manhandles him easily to sit with his back against the headboard in the middle of the bed. Zayn has the heel of his hand pressed down hard at the front of his jeans and his eyes are dark with something Ant’s only seen from the other side of Danny’s bedroom door. “Go on, then,” Danny says, petting at Zayn’s hair, and Ant feels a weight lifted off his chest, replaced by a different kind of heaviness when Zayn crawls between his legs and licks into his mouth.
And then Zayn’s other hand is pressing down into Ant’s shorts, palming at him, and Ant can’t keep quiet against his mouth because all that wanting in his chest suddenly has shape and weight and color. He can’t keep quiet when Zayn presses their foreheads together and slips his hand past Ant’s waistband and touches him for the first time, gasping like his lungs are entirely out of air.
Ant doesn’t know who he’s apologizing to when he’s stammering “sorry, sorry,” over the rushing in his ears, the black creeping at the edges of his vision when he comes hard over Zayn’s tentative fingers.
Zayn’s the one who shushes at him, presses soft little kisses to the corner of his mouth, but he tips his head a little to look at Danny for guidance (and it’s almost amusing, how he’s fallen into that habit, too). Danny nods, and before Ant has time to realize it, Zayn’s pulling his shorts and briefs down at the same time and pushing them out of the way, off the edge of the bed. He brings his hand up to his mouth first, tongue darting out to lap over his knuckles, and Ant has to close his eyes, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t miss the way Zayn sucks down his fingers, one by one, and only realizes he’s taken his time when he spreads his hand next to Ant’s hip on the bed and ducks his head down to lick at Ant’s lower belly, looking up through his lashes.
Danny pushes his hand into Zayn’s hair, thumbs through the soft bits of his new quiff that are flopping into his eyes, and says, again, “go on, then.” Like it’s just that easy for him to give Zayn away.
It’s Ant, though, and Danny’s never had to give him anything, it’s always been theirs if it’s been his, and maybe the only surprise in all of this is that it took this long.
;
Danny goes to New York with the band, the first time, and he and Zayn roam Central Park and Zayn sniffles into his scarf, cold and small, huddled in a coat that doesn’t look like his. (Zayn is good at taking a little bit of something from everyone.) They send pictures to Ant, and he’s as cold in London as they are in America, looking at his computer screen and thinking it’s funny, how this time he’s the one five hours ahead.
;
“You’re in love with your band, mate,” Danny warns him, because he’s not sure Zayn’s grasped this just yet. He’s laid out on the floor of the back lounge, the latest victim of Louis’ hit and run, shoving, gasping tickle fights. Danny pokes at him with the toe of his trainer. Zayn snaps his teeth at him and pulls all the laces out one side with nimble fingers. “You jealous?”
“Nah,” Danny says. “I’m not worried.”
;
He’s not. He knows he might should be; Danny’s never seen obsession and possession and crazy mad in love like he sees in the five of them when they’re together. But he can’t deny that it works, that it’s been good for Zayn as much as it’s been a change. He’s only been on tour with them for forty-eight hours, and he already can’t imagine any of them without the others. Zayn was made to fit against Louis’ side for sneak-attack planning sessions, Louis was made to fall asleep under Harry’s arm, Harry was made to pull Niall into his chest in crowds, Niall was made to make Liam blush with his peculiar obscenities. And Liam was made to turn Zayn into a stammering mess of puppy eyes and teen libido. Danny’s still not sure about that one.
So he watches, not wanting to interfere with their little patterns, their endless cycle of cause and effect and the way their self-contained chaos seems to work. It’s five o’clock somewhere on the American east coast, and a small herd of radio interviewers have just left to be replaced with bags of gummy bears, one of those habits Danny can see right through but wouldn’t dream of calling the higher-ups out on; not when Harry is separating his into little piles by color and then picking up one of each to put in his mouth, and Niall still has more than half his bag but is cozying up to Liam’s side and eyeing his, and Zayn looks happy curled up against the armrest of the couch.
“Danny,” Harry begins, one cheek swollen full of gooey gummy bits, “D’you ever like, miss him?”
“Of course he misses him, Einstein,” Louis tuts from his place between Harry’s legs on the floor. “You’d miss ‘im too, wouldn’t you?”
“Miss ‘im to bits,” Niall decides, and flicks a gummy bear at Harry’s head.
"I think all our families and friends miss us when we’re away,” Liam says, looking a little grumpy. “We all miss them.”
“I do miss ‘im,” Danny finally gets in- it’s nearly impossible to keep track of their conversations. “But you take good care of him, yeah?”
“He sounds so much like him,” Niall points out, and Liam nods, “Y’do, mate.”
Danny raises an eyebrow, laughs a little. “We’re from the same place, so.”
“I like ‘is accent better,” Zayn says. “And Ant’s. ‘s even stronger.”
“You wound me,” Danny frowns, clutching at his chest. Harry offers him a fistful of gummies and he takes them, even though they’re growing a bit sticky and warm. It feels a lot like being handed candy by a toddler.
There’s a soft smile lingering in the edges of Zayn’s wicked smirk, and Danny can tell he’s not saying something. (He’ll text Ant later. he misses you.)
;
Seeing them onstage, all not-dancing and pinching each other and nodding with adoring looks when Zayn nails his solos, is all the confirmation anyone could ever need that Zayn is well taken care of.
Danny stands behind a crate side-stage, watches as Zayn pours his voice into the mic and staggers back for the others to take their turn, his body so small under the bright lights and the weight of the applause.
;
“I miss you a lot sometimes.” Zayn looks so earnest that Danny wants to laugh, a little, just because it hurts to consider the alternative. “I miss you a lot too,” he says, biting his tongue, “Ant too, kid’s crazy without you there.”
“No, I mean,” Zayn’s face scrunches up, eloquent and uninhibited now that it’s just them and the alcohol in his blood. “I mean I miss you, like.”
Danny nods slowly, pets at Zayn’s cheek, thumbing over his stubble. He’s out of ways to spell out how he misses Zayn, wouldn’t have time to list the times he’s wanted him there since all of this. “Yeah?”
Zayn nods. “I miss you now.”
Danny gets that. And it doesn’t seem to matter how close they get, it’s not quite the same.
;
When he gets back, Danny comes by the house and he’s got the bag of dirty clothes he’d traded Zayn for clean ones out of his own drawer; Zayn is the world’s worst packer, they all know this. Ant doesn’t ask about the tour, doesn’t ask about Zayn. But he sleeps with one of the shirts for weeks, until it smells like the three of them indistinguishably, and that keeps him warm enough to wait for Zayn to come home. Danny doesn’t say anything.
;
It’s another break, another dip on the roller coaster before the cars are dragged up the track again. Danny and Zayn pick Ant up after school, and their mum kisses all three of them in a row on their way out the door, and they listen to Take Care well into London.
They get the tattoos. It’s another first for Ant, and Danny takes pictures on his phone- Zayn and Ant in chairs side by side, needles punching the matching ink patterns into their skin.
“If they’re the same,” he asks, afterwards, voice soft with amusement, “How do they fit?”
Ant laughs, a little at the look of dismay on Zayn’s face, and a little bit at himself.
But then Zayn shrugs, says, “Well, you’ll have to get the one that interlocks ‘em,” and yeah. That’s how they fit.
;
At the flat, Danny has three rolled joints and slaps Ant’s hand away when he tries to take the baggie. Zayn grins and bumps his shoulder against Danny’s, smoothes his fingertips down the rolling edge of tape and cling film at Ant’s elbow and pulls him over to Danny’s bed, sits with his legs folded up and his lip between his teeth.
Danny settles against the headboard, reaching to the bedside table for his lighter and keeping his fingers loose around the bag. Ant’s knee knocks Zayn’s when Danny lights up, spliff pinched between his index and thumb, and he holds the hit in for one, two, three seconds and then waves Ant over.
Ant can feel Zayn’s eyes on him as Danny grabs his chin, fingertips raking over the lightest stubble, and makes sure Ant’s mouth is open before letting his eyes fall closed and exhaling a stream of smoke that Ant inhales easily.
There’s a small noise and for a moment none of them know who’s to blame, but when Danny licks his lips, still pressed up against Ant, Zayn’s mouth falls open and this time it’s definitely him. “Yeah, yeah,” Danny breathes, voice caught somewhere between rough and fond. “C’mere, Z.” Zayn moves almost too quickly to him, all but crawling into his lap, and it makes Ant’s head spin, he has to close his eyes for a minute against the heat and the fuzziness and the ricochet of motion. When he opens them again, Danny has one hand on Zayn’s jaw, thumbing just below his ear so tenderly that it aches, and Zayn has tipped forward so that their foreheads meet as they share smoke. It’s not kissing, but it’s almost better, to watch their lips move like a silent movie version of kisses. Ant exhales.
When Zayn’s lungs are full and Danny’s eyes look watery, Danny tips his mouth close to his ear and cups a hand over it. Zayn almost loses his hit smiling, but then he silently beckons Ant closer. Both pairs of knees fit together now, and Zayn thumbs at Ant’s lower lip till his jaw drops and presses their mouths together, breathes out.
Ant thinks he can’t be blamed for choking, even if it’s the first time he’s done so since the first time he did this, and he has to shove Zayn away to avoid coughing in his face. His eyes feel a little dry and through the burn and the blur of his lungs exploding he watches Danny and Zayn grin at him.
Danny’s lit the second joint by the time that Ant can breathe again, and he takes a short pull before holding it out, casual and so goddamn cool between two fingers. “Try again, yeah?” Ant takes it, nodding, and inhales slowly, carefully. Zayn is already leaning forward, licking his lips, and it’s better, this time, Ant that bit more prepared for the slick of Zayn’s tongue tracing the seam of his mouth, chasing the smoke.
And he’s so gone already, really, lost in the repetition and the haze and Zayn’s plush mouth when Zayn’s the one choking two more hits in with Danny’s hand inside his sweats. Ant stubs out the inch-long roach against the back of his phone and stares blearily- Zayn’s adam’s apple bobs as he clears his throat, smiling stupidly with his eyes closed and his head tipped back, hands flat behind him on the bed and hips rocking lazily in time with Danny’s hand.
Even now- especially now, after the tv cameras and the stage lights and the crowds, perhaps- Zayn is so well aware of the way Ant watches, and he lowers his head and folds a hand over Ant’s knee, elbow shiny and plastic-wrapped, matchies, pets at dark jeans. “Off, yeah?”
It’s hard to protest that, with Ant already stripped so bare to both of them. Zayn smiles like he knows and tastes like weed and I dare you and it’s easy, really.
;
In the morning Ant crawls out of bed, stumbling for the fridge and filtered water to find Zayn sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor with a bowl of yoghurt and Billie curled up on his lap. He looks mostly asleep, but he grins up at Ant from under floppy fringe and Ant could care less about the water.
Danny snorts when he comes around the counter and finds them snogging against the cabinets, folded into each other’s laps, and calmly fills Billie’s bowl, nudges at Zayn’s knee with his toes as he steps over their legs to the sink.
When Zayn pulls away, scraping his teeth into Ant’s lower lip with wicked surety, mumbles, “go shower,” Ant can’t find it in himself to argue.
“Morning,” he hears, whisper-soft and honey-sweet as he turns the corner towards the bathroom, and when he looks back, Danny has Zayn on the counter, is standing between his knees, hands in his stupid sleep-soft hair.
;
Zayn goes back to the boys, goes back to his world tour and thousands of hungry hands and mouths reaching for his body on stage each night. Danny moves into his flat and gets a new job and keeps their dog, and sometimes, sometimes, Ant is lonely.
When he sees the pictures, watches the interviews- and it isn’t often; it’s too strange, too foreign, to see someone you’ve known your entire life (or what counts of it) on a computer screen, talking like a stranger, answering silly “getting to know you” questions when Ant has known the answers for years- it’s harder.
Danny had said they work together, had come back from tour with a phone full of pictures of Zayn and the others all tangled up in each other. Now, Ant knows Danny had been trying to warn him. They work together, and he hadn’t meant their job.
But Ant curls up in his single bed in their hometown and reads you’d like australia i think lighting up like reassurance across his blackberry screen, skype soon? promised to run lines with you :)
And Ant knows the proud smile that even those four other boys rarely get; the one that makes soft lines bloom at the corners of Zayn’s eyes and shows barely a hint of teeth, like any more would be too much, too gaudy and loud and overt. It’s not the same, with pixels blurring the lines and a static shade over his words, over fold your arms around me close and strain me so that our hearts may break and our souls go free at last, but he knows.
(Ant knows, too, that it always, always tastes like cigarettes and mint and unbearable sweetness.)
;
Zayn’s probably been in love with Perrie since he saw her audition. Danny’s not even sure if he did see her audition, but that’s what it feels like. Looking at them now, all huge eyes and animated hands and raised eyebrows as they chatter in the corner of the couch, barricaded into their own little world, Danny thinks it’s a little funny. Zayn, his Zayn, their Zayn, who spent so long blind to how everyone who touches him falls in love with him, and now he can finally, a little bit, see it.
“She does love me,” he tells Danny, just the once, shy like it’s a secret, like anyone who sees them together could possibly miss it.
So Danny doesn’t hate Perrie. Anyone who can make Zayn smile like he does at her silly accents and lame jokes, anyone who Zayn trusts like Zayn trusts her, Danny can’t be anything but happy for.
;
Ant wants to like her and wants to like her and tries to like her and doesn’t, can’t, shrugs out of Zayn’s hugs the evening they all meet her the first time. She’s too little, too bright, too shiny and glossy and soft and Ant wants to punch Zayn in the ribs, how is this what you want when you have the world?
When you have me, he wants to say, but he knows Zayn would only smile, confused, and say, but of course I have you.
Of course.
Just maybe not like Ant wants when he looks at Perrie.
;
So Ant falls in love with someone else. Easy, in succession, a line of girls with brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes and full lips and teasing accents. He’s not stupid, knows that they know about him and Danny and Zayn (although they don’t, they will never know about him and Danny and Zayn). But sometimes they like him for him, and that doesn’t hurt. He likes girls, the banter and the flirting and the flipping of their hair over soft shoulders, the way long legs cross in short skirts.
And slowly, slowly, he thinks, he learns to love Zayn in a way that doesn’t catch his breath or stamp on his lungs.
;
New York comes and it’s huge.
Danny tells Ant about the rehearsals, over a month before the date, and Ant sees the pictures and gets the texts and decides that no one really knows what they’re in for- he certainly doesn’t, and Zayn’s nervous smiles over Skype and over weekends show a hint, at most, of certainty, because it’s a gig, and he knows that much.
Then again, that’s a gross understatement, because everyone is going and the whole world has been watching, leading up to this thing rearing in the horizon, not a beginning or an end but a whole new kind of milestone.
Two years isn’t nearly enough time to get used to a life like this, Ant thinks selfishly, but he tells himself he’s just worried for Zayn.
;
“How do you,” he motions out at the stage, at the people, at Zayn, and Danny takes it all in and looks back at him with quiet eyes.
“‘s what he’s meant for,” he says, finally, and Ant opens his mouth: he’s meant for us-
“Don’t you care,” he spits, and shoves at the hand Danny lifts to his shoulder. “Don’t you ever hate it just a little?”
Danny just watches Zayn, and no, Ant realizes. He doesn’t.
Danny’s a better person than Ant.
Maybe Danny is Stefan, after all, and Ant is only Damon. But as dramatic as it sounds, Ant can’t help thinking that now neither of them have their Elena.
;
They’re not, though. Stefan and Damon. Zayn’s no Elena, for that matter, as close as he comes sometimes, and this is what hits Ant as he watches the boys come off-stage at Madison Square Garden, come off the biggest high of their career so far.
Danny is laughing helplessly as Zayn breaks away from the tangle of limbs that is LouisHarryNiallLiam and sweeps Perrie into his arms, twirls her around and kisses her pink mouth. Ant has a split second to be jealous, and then Zayn is sprinting towards them and they are not, but they are this, Danny pulling Zayn into his chest with one arm and Zayn clinging to Ant’s bicep and pressing his nose into Ant’s neck and whatever else happens, this is okay.
Zayn’s still theirs, anyway; he just belongs to all of them- because maybe Zayn’s always been in love with the whole world right back, but for him the whole world is six boys and a bright-eyed girl.
Zayn/Danny/Anthony gen, with Zayn/Danny, Zayn/Anthony, Zayn/Danny/Anthony, ot5, and Zayn/Perrie | 6308 words | R
Warnings: implied and actual threesomes including incest, recreational drug use, unrequited feelings, and fluttery prose.
A/N: This is a story about how Zayn has always been Danny and Ant’s, and how sometimes sharing is hard (and sometimes it’s easy). Now with a playlist (thanks lousmalik, you're an angel!) [AO3]
Zayn’s always been theirs.
;
Not- technically not always. Not when he was this shiny new thing with a foot barely in the door, smiling shyly across the circle during warmups- Peter piper picked a peck of- and then pairing up with Danny to run lines. There’s a first for everything, really.
;
Danny has most of them. Most of the firsts, that is. Ant’s okay with this, because he and Zayn have their own firsts, and he’s never been jealous of Danny in that way. And Zayn was Danny’s to begin with, anyhow, it’s a fact, like that the only bits the two of them will never have of Zayn are for those four boys who share a stage with him every night.
Then again, it wouldn’t make as long a list if Danny and Ant were to split the things that are theirs individually, highlight the lines that don’t overlap. Danny’s never really known how to be selfish with his little brother, not when he’s the older one, the strong one, the man of the house. Danny’s never known not to share the things that make him happy with the one person who depends on him most.
And Zayn is easy to share.
;
Ant knows that Danny was Zayn's first everything. He was there, wasn't he? If anyone knows, it's him. He remembers Danny and Zayn coming home from school, remembers peeking around the doorframe to see them doing homework in Danny's room on the carpet, Zayn reading out lines from a paper, Danny mangling math equations, remembers when he peeked around the door frame and they weren't reading papers or doing math, when Danny had his hands in Zayn's short, buzzed hair and Zayn was making breathless, surprised noises against his brother's mouth.
He remembers, too, an afternoon when they closed the door, and after, when Danny was washing his hands in the bathroom, how he looked over at Ant, always leaning in the doorway, and said, "You know you can't tell mum, right?"
And Ant knew, and Danny ruffled his hair and pushed past him to take a flannel back to his room for Zayn.
;
Danny isn’t sure if Zayn would know if he didn’t tell him, so he does, because Danny is seemingly afraid of nothing, even the things that would tear most people in half. “You know Ant likes you, yeah?” he says, and doesn’t pull away from Zayn, leaves them tangled loosely together on his bed in the lazy afternoon sunlight. Danny thinks that everyone likes Zayn, thinks the entire world is a little in love with him because how could they not be? But he knows that Zayn doesn’t always see it.
Zayn curls his fingers into the sheets, pushes his fisted hand at Danny’s side. “I like him, too.”
;
Looking back, Ant thinks, maybe in the beginning he only wanted Zayn (in every way, not just sex, because nothing about them is just sex, it's always more than that or it wouldn't work) because Danny wanted him. He wasn't... jealous, didn't want to take Zayn from Danny; it was just how he knew that he should want Zayn. Because anything Danny loved and wanted, Ant knew was worth it.
But he’s seen Zayn since the beginning, since the blind faith and not-quite jealousy. He’s heard Zayn sing, and if that isn’t enough to fall in love with him, there’s a hundred other reasons that could fill the need just as easily.
;
Zayn has to go on tour, is the thing, with these four bright and loud and crazy and wonderful new people wedged between his ribs, pressed in close to him like they never really got out of that pile-up of blankets and pillows and boy that week in Cheshire. And as much as he’s (dauntingly, permanently) theirs in ways he’s only been Danny and Ant’s before, he knows this isn’t something he can give up so easily, like maybe there’s enough of Ant and Danny in him that pulls him back, that pushes the words up his throat and out of his mouth.
Danny has always been just that bit bigger and bolder and steadier, and he can settle Zayn’s stomach with a single look, that serious yet fond glance that’s been reserved for Ant since the day he was born, and for Zayn since the day he slunk into his shadow going down the hall of grade school. It’s always made Zayn feel special, a gift not won by right of blood or conquest, but simply bestowed out of affection. Danny is generosity and loyalty and fierce, unwavering belief, and Zayn envies him for all that he is, but never as much as he loves him for it.
So it’s Danny, because it’s always been Danny, and Zayn can’t, at seventeen, picture a world where it won’t be Danny forever. (Even if it isn’t, Zayn knows with absolute certainty, seventeen or not, that he will never regret it having been Danny.)
;
“I don’t wanna go on tour, like.” Zayn swallows, wraps his arms tighter around his knees. He’s in the middle of Danny’s bed, Danny stretched on his side reading over some notes for his exam the next week, and Zayn feels the distance between them already. And he hasn’t even packed yet. “Don’ wanna go like this.”
Danny keeps his eyes on his notes because Zayn’s wearing a hoodie he had never seen before, and he’s allowed to be childish sometimes. He is. “What d’you mean like this?”
“Like,” Zayn mutters, and fists his hands in the cuffs of the hoodie that smells too much like judges’ house and a boy he doesn’t know quite what to think of just yet. “It’s just, everyone always talks shit about their- sex stuff, and it’ll be worse on tour.”
And Danny has to look up at that, because- because he wonders sometimes if Zayn’s told about them, if maybe Zayn has made up people but all of them, in the end, are Danny; if he’s given new names and faces to the times on Saturday nights in the dark of Zayn’s bedroom, quiet so his sisters wouldn’t hear. “Y’mean like. Like, you wanna shag someone else so you can tell ‘em, yeah?”
Zayn flinches, “No, no, not- It’s not, like, about telling them.” He considers, for a moment, thinks of Louis’ expectant eyes and Harry’s sympathetic eyes and Niall’s laughter and Liam. Reconsiders, and tries to speak slowly enough that the words work their way out in the right order, in spite of his frantic pulse. “Maybe it is, a bit? But I just- I don’t think any of ‘em haven’t, y’know? An’ I don’t wanna be the only one.”
That clicks, though, for Danny (accompanied with a small surge of relief that he still gets Zayn even when he doesn’t make much sense, and that, if Zayn’s really implying what Danny thinks he is, he gets Zayn, too, before anyone else). “So like, you want.”
Licking his lips and letting go of the worn red cuff half-covering his hand, Zayn nods. “I. Yeah. Please?”
Danny moves slowly, rolling onto his side and then pushing himself up until he’s cross-legged in front of Zayn, rubs at his skinny ankle where it pokes out from the hem of ragged pajama pants. “We can, like. Talk about it? What you want.” He crinkles his forehead up with a sudden thought, and presses his thumb into the soft spot above Zayn’s heel. “Y’know you don’t hafta impress ‘em, yeah?” Danny still isn’t completely sure about the dynamic these four boys have brought into Zayn’s life; whether they’re pulling him out of his shell or just pulling it away from him. Every protective nerve in his body sings symphonies of rage at the thought that Zayn might be trying to make himself worthy of them, when he’s the most perfect person Danny’s ever met.
“‘s not about impressing them,” Zayn shakes his head, but he’s still shy and small enough that he keeps the real reason to himself.
It’s only the following day, when they have the house to themselves and Zayn is wrecked and beautiful and it’s overcast out and Danny wants to stay in that moment forever, that Zayn explains, plain and simple, “I just wanted you ‘fore anyone else could have me.”
Danny doesn’t know what to say to that, because Zayn and Ant are the ones who work with words, and he’s just the one who holds onto them, swallows their pretty words and keeps them close. So he does just that, and doesn’t forget.
;
i think i rlly mesedup :(
It’s four a.m. and Danny has been asleep for three and a half hours, has to be up in the same, has a match early and the only reason he even clicks the text open is because Zayn’s name is lit up ultra bright against the blackness of his room, urgent. y?? he sends back, fingers stumbling and eyes aching against the shine of his phone screen, r u k?
i snogged liam
Danny blinks and blinks again, rubs his thumb over the screen and exhales, rolls to his stomach and props up on his elbows to type easier. He starts a dozen texts and erases them all before sending. He can hear Zayn freaking out through the twelve letters of his message, knows it’s in the quiet, dangerous way that he freaks out when he’s not had enough sleep and he’s overthinking things. uh k what happned? he sends, finally, because Zayn will only panic more if he doesn’t respond, and follows it with a quick, why is that bad z r u ok?
It’s a few minutes before he gets anything back, and his chest constricts at the message, split in half.
idk hes gone 2 bed now but its weird cos im not sur he likes me like that nd i rly hope hes not gna ignore me... harry n louis are prty much 2gether but i dont think liam wants 2 b like tht..
Danny closes his eyes and thinks about his match and then sees Zayn in the dark space behind his eyelids. He exits his messages, presses dial. “Hey,” he whispers, when the line clicks on, and he knows his voice is rough and tell-tale sleepy, but he’s just thankful Zayn answered.
“Can’t talk for long,” Zayn whispers- Danny knows he’s been rooming with Niall, who apparently sleeps like a rock, but he doesn’t want to keep Zayn up either, busy schedule and all, being a pop star. “Hi.”
So Danny takes a breath and pushes back the tangle of nasty, sour things rising in his chest. “Listen, you’re- y’gonna be okay, yeah? You’re y’own person, y’not Harry or Louis an’ you can do this. Try to talk t’im tomorrow, Z, and whatever happens, I’ll. Be here when you get back. Y’hear?”
Zayn exhales noisily, and there’s rustling, like he’s twisting himself up in the covers. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “I just.”
Danny isn’t sure whether he can bear to hear whatever comes after that in Zayn’s head; he can imagine the possibilities all too clearly. But Zayn doesn’t finish, just takes a deep breath. “Thanks, Danny.”
“Love you, mate,” Danny rasps, a bit louder than a whisper, and Zayn makes a pleased sound in response, like he’s been waiting for it.
“Love you. G’night.”
Danny falls asleep on his phone and dreams of searching for something that he knows he has to protect. It stays just out of his reach.
;
Ant thinks he can feel them all under Zayn’s skin, like they’ve buried themselves in him just like the ink that traces out his own design on Zayn’s arm and the Arabic on his chest. He can feel it in the embrace they share when Zayn first comes through the door, the warmth and the familiarity and the weight of this new thing, growing and pushing itself up through his bones. And he’s known; texts and drunken calls and pictures, Zayn’s never tried to hide it from him- or Danny. But it’s different, the knowing and the seeing. The feeling.
It’s in the way that Zayn carries himself, now, and the settling of his shoulders as he crawls under the covers on his side of Ant’s bed, that first night back.
“W’missed you,” Ant says, a little afraid, unsure that Zayn will say it back.
But Zayn is radiating warmth, and it’s in that smile, too, the one Ant knows so well. “Missed home,” Zayn replies, and hopes Ant will get the implications, the way a lot of clothes in Zayn’s luggage may not be his and he may have new things to giggle at for no real reason, new in-jokes and ideas and experiences, but this is still where he came from and where he’ll always come back.
Zayn has bruised-dark circles under his eyes from jetlag, and his hair is damp, tufty, from his shower, but he’s still breathtaking to Ant, makes his chest ache a little with the relief and the want of having him this close. There’s barely a foot between them on the bed, and Ant exhales, clutches his arms tighter around himself. It’s strange, without Danny here- he’ll be back day after next, but it still feels wrong that Ant has Zayn to himself and Danny hasn’t even properly gotten to welcome him home. It makes Ant unsure of how far he can push, how much he can ask for.
“I snogged this girl at school,” he blurts out, in the end, and makes a face at himself.
The first important change, perhaps, is the way Zayn grins and pulls Ant in without restraint, crowds their chests and foreheads together, and. That’s a new habit. “She fit?” he asks, a foreign kind of curiosity spread across his features; and if it’s something Ant’s never seen before, well, it seems natural.
Ant grins a little, helpless in surprise. “Yeah? I mean, yeah. We’re not, like, seeing each other or anythin’. But yeah.” He squeezes Zayn’s arm and leans back. “‘d you, then? Snog any girls on your big tour, all popstar-like?”
“Once or twice, yeah, but like.” Zayn shrugs, picks at Ant’s sleeve absentmindedly and keeps his eyes down. “‘s not. No one I’ll see again, you know?”
Really, Ant doesn’t, but he nods all the same. Before he can think of anything clever to say- what to tell the person who plays sold out arenas is a question he’ll grow accustomed to, much like what to give the very same one who could buy anything he wanted- Zayn’s speaking again, casual and unaffected.
“Kissed some blokes, too.”
They’re still so close that Ant itches with the proximity, can feel Zayn’s body heat creeping into his own bones, and he shivers a little. “Yeah?”
Zayn’s face is unreadable, smoothed out from their shared laughter, his mouth full even as he draws his lower lip up between his teeth. Ant swallows and wonders how much of this Danny knows already, how much Zayn is saying for the first time. “Gonna see any of them again?” he asks, making himself look up to Zayn’s eyes again.
“I’m sort of stuck with ‘em, mate,” Zayn says, and that’s that.
;
Later, when they’ve turned the lights out and their bodies have drifted apart and Zayn’s eyelids are heavy and Ant itches so so badly to just reach out a few inches and brush his fingertips across Zayn’s lashes, only then does Zayn pick up Ant’s hand and line it up with his, mumble in a low rumble he must’ve picked up on the road, “I think I still like you best, though.”
Ant thinks about saying, I could kiss you all night, but Zayn has already fallen asleep.
;
Spring turns into summer, and summer grows late. Zayn is on break, another two days before he’s swept back up into the hurricane, and they watch Skins on the tiny telly set opposite Danny’s double bed.
And when Ant remembers, this is what he remembers first, brightest, always. Danny’s arm is slung over Zayn’s shoulder against the headboard, and Ant is spread out on his stomach next to Zayn’s legs, and Zayn’s already well on his way to things so much bigger than a school auditorium or his two favourite boys (still his favourite, always his favourite, even with the smells and clothes of four brand new people who love each other and love him and are here to take him away, no matter how great they may be).
He’s not sure why he looks over his shoulder in that split second. He wonders if it had been a second before or after, if he’d missed that single moment, if anything would’ve happened at all. It seems inevitable, but Ant just doesn’t know.
Zayn is leaning up to press his mouth to Danny’s upper lip, a smile blooming fresh and new in his cheeks, and Danny’s eyes are open and Ant looks away.
“Zayn,” Danny says, gently, and Zayn exhales, his legs moving under the covers, jostling Ant’s ribs.
“Ant, too,” Danny says, and that’s their first.
;
Zayn’s mouth is soft and full of tiny noises to search out under his tongue and behind his teeth. A lot of them are for Danny, but some of them are for Ant, too, and it’s a discovery that leaves him breathless.
It makes sense that Danny’s in charge, that he’s the one who gets to kiss Zayn deeper and dirtier than Ant’s ever seen before, and that he’s the one cupping his hands over Zayn’s ear and making Zayn nod, eyes fluttering closed.
“C’mere,” he says to Ant, manhandles him easily to sit with his back against the headboard in the middle of the bed. Zayn has the heel of his hand pressed down hard at the front of his jeans and his eyes are dark with something Ant’s only seen from the other side of Danny’s bedroom door. “Go on, then,” Danny says, petting at Zayn’s hair, and Ant feels a weight lifted off his chest, replaced by a different kind of heaviness when Zayn crawls between his legs and licks into his mouth.
And then Zayn’s other hand is pressing down into Ant’s shorts, palming at him, and Ant can’t keep quiet against his mouth because all that wanting in his chest suddenly has shape and weight and color. He can’t keep quiet when Zayn presses their foreheads together and slips his hand past Ant’s waistband and touches him for the first time, gasping like his lungs are entirely out of air.
Ant doesn’t know who he’s apologizing to when he’s stammering “sorry, sorry,” over the rushing in his ears, the black creeping at the edges of his vision when he comes hard over Zayn’s tentative fingers.
Zayn’s the one who shushes at him, presses soft little kisses to the corner of his mouth, but he tips his head a little to look at Danny for guidance (and it’s almost amusing, how he’s fallen into that habit, too). Danny nods, and before Ant has time to realize it, Zayn’s pulling his shorts and briefs down at the same time and pushing them out of the way, off the edge of the bed. He brings his hand up to his mouth first, tongue darting out to lap over his knuckles, and Ant has to close his eyes, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t miss the way Zayn sucks down his fingers, one by one, and only realizes he’s taken his time when he spreads his hand next to Ant’s hip on the bed and ducks his head down to lick at Ant’s lower belly, looking up through his lashes.
Danny pushes his hand into Zayn’s hair, thumbs through the soft bits of his new quiff that are flopping into his eyes, and says, again, “go on, then.” Like it’s just that easy for him to give Zayn away.
It’s Ant, though, and Danny’s never had to give him anything, it’s always been theirs if it’s been his, and maybe the only surprise in all of this is that it took this long.
;
Danny goes to New York with the band, the first time, and he and Zayn roam Central Park and Zayn sniffles into his scarf, cold and small, huddled in a coat that doesn’t look like his. (Zayn is good at taking a little bit of something from everyone.) They send pictures to Ant, and he’s as cold in London as they are in America, looking at his computer screen and thinking it’s funny, how this time he’s the one five hours ahead.
;
“You’re in love with your band, mate,” Danny warns him, because he’s not sure Zayn’s grasped this just yet. He’s laid out on the floor of the back lounge, the latest victim of Louis’ hit and run, shoving, gasping tickle fights. Danny pokes at him with the toe of his trainer. Zayn snaps his teeth at him and pulls all the laces out one side with nimble fingers. “You jealous?”
“Nah,” Danny says. “I’m not worried.”
;
He’s not. He knows he might should be; Danny’s never seen obsession and possession and crazy mad in love like he sees in the five of them when they’re together. But he can’t deny that it works, that it’s been good for Zayn as much as it’s been a change. He’s only been on tour with them for forty-eight hours, and he already can’t imagine any of them without the others. Zayn was made to fit against Louis’ side for sneak-attack planning sessions, Louis was made to fall asleep under Harry’s arm, Harry was made to pull Niall into his chest in crowds, Niall was made to make Liam blush with his peculiar obscenities. And Liam was made to turn Zayn into a stammering mess of puppy eyes and teen libido. Danny’s still not sure about that one.
So he watches, not wanting to interfere with their little patterns, their endless cycle of cause and effect and the way their self-contained chaos seems to work. It’s five o’clock somewhere on the American east coast, and a small herd of radio interviewers have just left to be replaced with bags of gummy bears, one of those habits Danny can see right through but wouldn’t dream of calling the higher-ups out on; not when Harry is separating his into little piles by color and then picking up one of each to put in his mouth, and Niall still has more than half his bag but is cozying up to Liam’s side and eyeing his, and Zayn looks happy curled up against the armrest of the couch.
“Danny,” Harry begins, one cheek swollen full of gooey gummy bits, “D’you ever like, miss him?”
“Of course he misses him, Einstein,” Louis tuts from his place between Harry’s legs on the floor. “You’d miss ‘im too, wouldn’t you?”
“Miss ‘im to bits,” Niall decides, and flicks a gummy bear at Harry’s head.
"I think all our families and friends miss us when we’re away,” Liam says, looking a little grumpy. “We all miss them.”
“I do miss ‘im,” Danny finally gets in- it’s nearly impossible to keep track of their conversations. “But you take good care of him, yeah?”
“He sounds so much like him,” Niall points out, and Liam nods, “Y’do, mate.”
Danny raises an eyebrow, laughs a little. “We’re from the same place, so.”
“I like ‘is accent better,” Zayn says. “And Ant’s. ‘s even stronger.”
“You wound me,” Danny frowns, clutching at his chest. Harry offers him a fistful of gummies and he takes them, even though they’re growing a bit sticky and warm. It feels a lot like being handed candy by a toddler.
There’s a soft smile lingering in the edges of Zayn’s wicked smirk, and Danny can tell he’s not saying something. (He’ll text Ant later. he misses you.)
;
Seeing them onstage, all not-dancing and pinching each other and nodding with adoring looks when Zayn nails his solos, is all the confirmation anyone could ever need that Zayn is well taken care of.
Danny stands behind a crate side-stage, watches as Zayn pours his voice into the mic and staggers back for the others to take their turn, his body so small under the bright lights and the weight of the applause.
;
“I miss you a lot sometimes.” Zayn looks so earnest that Danny wants to laugh, a little, just because it hurts to consider the alternative. “I miss you a lot too,” he says, biting his tongue, “Ant too, kid’s crazy without you there.”
“No, I mean,” Zayn’s face scrunches up, eloquent and uninhibited now that it’s just them and the alcohol in his blood. “I mean I miss you, like.”
Danny nods slowly, pets at Zayn’s cheek, thumbing over his stubble. He’s out of ways to spell out how he misses Zayn, wouldn’t have time to list the times he’s wanted him there since all of this. “Yeah?”
Zayn nods. “I miss you now.”
Danny gets that. And it doesn’t seem to matter how close they get, it’s not quite the same.
;
When he gets back, Danny comes by the house and he’s got the bag of dirty clothes he’d traded Zayn for clean ones out of his own drawer; Zayn is the world’s worst packer, they all know this. Ant doesn’t ask about the tour, doesn’t ask about Zayn. But he sleeps with one of the shirts for weeks, until it smells like the three of them indistinguishably, and that keeps him warm enough to wait for Zayn to come home. Danny doesn’t say anything.
;
It’s another break, another dip on the roller coaster before the cars are dragged up the track again. Danny and Zayn pick Ant up after school, and their mum kisses all three of them in a row on their way out the door, and they listen to Take Care well into London.
They get the tattoos. It’s another first for Ant, and Danny takes pictures on his phone- Zayn and Ant in chairs side by side, needles punching the matching ink patterns into their skin.
“If they’re the same,” he asks, afterwards, voice soft with amusement, “How do they fit?”
Ant laughs, a little at the look of dismay on Zayn’s face, and a little bit at himself.
But then Zayn shrugs, says, “Well, you’ll have to get the one that interlocks ‘em,” and yeah. That’s how they fit.
;
At the flat, Danny has three rolled joints and slaps Ant’s hand away when he tries to take the baggie. Zayn grins and bumps his shoulder against Danny’s, smoothes his fingertips down the rolling edge of tape and cling film at Ant’s elbow and pulls him over to Danny’s bed, sits with his legs folded up and his lip between his teeth.
Danny settles against the headboard, reaching to the bedside table for his lighter and keeping his fingers loose around the bag. Ant’s knee knocks Zayn’s when Danny lights up, spliff pinched between his index and thumb, and he holds the hit in for one, two, three seconds and then waves Ant over.
Ant can feel Zayn’s eyes on him as Danny grabs his chin, fingertips raking over the lightest stubble, and makes sure Ant’s mouth is open before letting his eyes fall closed and exhaling a stream of smoke that Ant inhales easily.
There’s a small noise and for a moment none of them know who’s to blame, but when Danny licks his lips, still pressed up against Ant, Zayn’s mouth falls open and this time it’s definitely him. “Yeah, yeah,” Danny breathes, voice caught somewhere between rough and fond. “C’mere, Z.” Zayn moves almost too quickly to him, all but crawling into his lap, and it makes Ant’s head spin, he has to close his eyes for a minute against the heat and the fuzziness and the ricochet of motion. When he opens them again, Danny has one hand on Zayn’s jaw, thumbing just below his ear so tenderly that it aches, and Zayn has tipped forward so that their foreheads meet as they share smoke. It’s not kissing, but it’s almost better, to watch their lips move like a silent movie version of kisses. Ant exhales.
When Zayn’s lungs are full and Danny’s eyes look watery, Danny tips his mouth close to his ear and cups a hand over it. Zayn almost loses his hit smiling, but then he silently beckons Ant closer. Both pairs of knees fit together now, and Zayn thumbs at Ant’s lower lip till his jaw drops and presses their mouths together, breathes out.
Ant thinks he can’t be blamed for choking, even if it’s the first time he’s done so since the first time he did this, and he has to shove Zayn away to avoid coughing in his face. His eyes feel a little dry and through the burn and the blur of his lungs exploding he watches Danny and Zayn grin at him.
Danny’s lit the second joint by the time that Ant can breathe again, and he takes a short pull before holding it out, casual and so goddamn cool between two fingers. “Try again, yeah?” Ant takes it, nodding, and inhales slowly, carefully. Zayn is already leaning forward, licking his lips, and it’s better, this time, Ant that bit more prepared for the slick of Zayn’s tongue tracing the seam of his mouth, chasing the smoke.
And he’s so gone already, really, lost in the repetition and the haze and Zayn’s plush mouth when Zayn’s the one choking two more hits in with Danny’s hand inside his sweats. Ant stubs out the inch-long roach against the back of his phone and stares blearily- Zayn’s adam’s apple bobs as he clears his throat, smiling stupidly with his eyes closed and his head tipped back, hands flat behind him on the bed and hips rocking lazily in time with Danny’s hand.
Even now- especially now, after the tv cameras and the stage lights and the crowds, perhaps- Zayn is so well aware of the way Ant watches, and he lowers his head and folds a hand over Ant’s knee, elbow shiny and plastic-wrapped, matchies, pets at dark jeans. “Off, yeah?”
It’s hard to protest that, with Ant already stripped so bare to both of them. Zayn smiles like he knows and tastes like weed and I dare you and it’s easy, really.
;
In the morning Ant crawls out of bed, stumbling for the fridge and filtered water to find Zayn sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor with a bowl of yoghurt and Billie curled up on his lap. He looks mostly asleep, but he grins up at Ant from under floppy fringe and Ant could care less about the water.
Danny snorts when he comes around the counter and finds them snogging against the cabinets, folded into each other’s laps, and calmly fills Billie’s bowl, nudges at Zayn’s knee with his toes as he steps over their legs to the sink.
When Zayn pulls away, scraping his teeth into Ant’s lower lip with wicked surety, mumbles, “go shower,” Ant can’t find it in himself to argue.
“Morning,” he hears, whisper-soft and honey-sweet as he turns the corner towards the bathroom, and when he looks back, Danny has Zayn on the counter, is standing between his knees, hands in his stupid sleep-soft hair.
;
Zayn goes back to the boys, goes back to his world tour and thousands of hungry hands and mouths reaching for his body on stage each night. Danny moves into his flat and gets a new job and keeps their dog, and sometimes, sometimes, Ant is lonely.
When he sees the pictures, watches the interviews- and it isn’t often; it’s too strange, too foreign, to see someone you’ve known your entire life (or what counts of it) on a computer screen, talking like a stranger, answering silly “getting to know you” questions when Ant has known the answers for years- it’s harder.
Danny had said they work together, had come back from tour with a phone full of pictures of Zayn and the others all tangled up in each other. Now, Ant knows Danny had been trying to warn him. They work together, and he hadn’t meant their job.
But Ant curls up in his single bed in their hometown and reads you’d like australia i think lighting up like reassurance across his blackberry screen, skype soon? promised to run lines with you :)
And Ant knows the proud smile that even those four other boys rarely get; the one that makes soft lines bloom at the corners of Zayn’s eyes and shows barely a hint of teeth, like any more would be too much, too gaudy and loud and overt. It’s not the same, with pixels blurring the lines and a static shade over his words, over fold your arms around me close and strain me so that our hearts may break and our souls go free at last, but he knows.
(Ant knows, too, that it always, always tastes like cigarettes and mint and unbearable sweetness.)
;
Zayn’s probably been in love with Perrie since he saw her audition. Danny’s not even sure if he did see her audition, but that’s what it feels like. Looking at them now, all huge eyes and animated hands and raised eyebrows as they chatter in the corner of the couch, barricaded into their own little world, Danny thinks it’s a little funny. Zayn, his Zayn, their Zayn, who spent so long blind to how everyone who touches him falls in love with him, and now he can finally, a little bit, see it.
“She does love me,” he tells Danny, just the once, shy like it’s a secret, like anyone who sees them together could possibly miss it.
So Danny doesn’t hate Perrie. Anyone who can make Zayn smile like he does at her silly accents and lame jokes, anyone who Zayn trusts like Zayn trusts her, Danny can’t be anything but happy for.
;
Ant wants to like her and wants to like her and tries to like her and doesn’t, can’t, shrugs out of Zayn’s hugs the evening they all meet her the first time. She’s too little, too bright, too shiny and glossy and soft and Ant wants to punch Zayn in the ribs, how is this what you want when you have the world?
When you have me, he wants to say, but he knows Zayn would only smile, confused, and say, but of course I have you.
Of course.
Just maybe not like Ant wants when he looks at Perrie.
;
So Ant falls in love with someone else. Easy, in succession, a line of girls with brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes and full lips and teasing accents. He’s not stupid, knows that they know about him and Danny and Zayn (although they don’t, they will never know about him and Danny and Zayn). But sometimes they like him for him, and that doesn’t hurt. He likes girls, the banter and the flirting and the flipping of their hair over soft shoulders, the way long legs cross in short skirts.
And slowly, slowly, he thinks, he learns to love Zayn in a way that doesn’t catch his breath or stamp on his lungs.
;
New York comes and it’s huge.
Danny tells Ant about the rehearsals, over a month before the date, and Ant sees the pictures and gets the texts and decides that no one really knows what they’re in for- he certainly doesn’t, and Zayn’s nervous smiles over Skype and over weekends show a hint, at most, of certainty, because it’s a gig, and he knows that much.
Then again, that’s a gross understatement, because everyone is going and the whole world has been watching, leading up to this thing rearing in the horizon, not a beginning or an end but a whole new kind of milestone.
Two years isn’t nearly enough time to get used to a life like this, Ant thinks selfishly, but he tells himself he’s just worried for Zayn.
;
“How do you,” he motions out at the stage, at the people, at Zayn, and Danny takes it all in and looks back at him with quiet eyes.
“‘s what he’s meant for,” he says, finally, and Ant opens his mouth: he’s meant for us-
“Don’t you care,” he spits, and shoves at the hand Danny lifts to his shoulder. “Don’t you ever hate it just a little?”
Danny just watches Zayn, and no, Ant realizes. He doesn’t.
Danny’s a better person than Ant.
Maybe Danny is Stefan, after all, and Ant is only Damon. But as dramatic as it sounds, Ant can’t help thinking that now neither of them have their Elena.
;
They’re not, though. Stefan and Damon. Zayn’s no Elena, for that matter, as close as he comes sometimes, and this is what hits Ant as he watches the boys come off-stage at Madison Square Garden, come off the biggest high of their career so far.
Danny is laughing helplessly as Zayn breaks away from the tangle of limbs that is LouisHarryNiallLiam and sweeps Perrie into his arms, twirls her around and kisses her pink mouth. Ant has a split second to be jealous, and then Zayn is sprinting towards them and they are not, but they are this, Danny pulling Zayn into his chest with one arm and Zayn clinging to Ant’s bicep and pressing his nose into Ant’s neck and whatever else happens, this is okay.
Zayn’s still theirs, anyway; he just belongs to all of them- because maybe Zayn’s always been in love with the whole world right back, but for him the whole world is six boys and a bright-eyed girl.