something's gotta give [1/1]
title: something's gotta give
author: leira17
ships: none but you can read any pairing you want into it if you like
rating: pgish i guess
word count: 1600~
warnings: verbal fighting, swearing
summary: S
o that’s what they were, Zayn supposed. The kids stuck in the middle of an impending divorce. Liam and Louis are arguing, and it sucks. that's it that's the whole summary.
note: beta'd by my lovely laurencake. first time writing for this fandom/posting in this comm, so tell me if i'm doing something wrong!
Zayn woke with a start.
At first he couldn’t remember what woke him -- but then a crash sounded from the living area of the too-expensive hotel suite, and oh, right.
“Someone’s going to have to pay for that,” said Niall from his bed. Zayn didn’t respond, just listened to the silence, knowing it had to break soon. Sure enough --
“You’re the worst, you know that? The actual worst.”
“Oh, yes, I’m the worst, I’m obviously the worst. At least I know how to take a joke!”
“At least I can sing!”
There’s a slamming, then, of the door, and more quiet. Zayn stared at the ceiling for what felt like forever, waiting for Louis to come back, for Liam to go to sleep, for them to work out whatever issues they had with each other via some kind of card game instead of this screaming in early hours of the morning.
Whatever it was, it hadn’t started slowly. There’d been no build-up to it, no tension -- at least not that Zayn could see. One day, Louis just made a flippant comment about the amount of solos Liam got, and then it was like something snapped, and here they were.
The door to their room opened. Zayn, not particularly wanting to hear Liam’s half-arsed explanations, closed his eyes and pretended to have slept through the whole fiasco.
But it isn’t Liam’s voice that says, “Can I sleep in here?”, and Zayn sat up to see Harry illuminated in the doorway, wearing one of Louis’ jumpers and looking so very young that Zayn immediately made room. Harry nodded and closed the door behind him with a faint click. He slid under the blankets, pressing his bare legs against Zayn’s and crowding him in, even though the bed was more than big enough for the two of them. Before Zayn could protest (though honestly he’s not sure he was going to), Niall climbed in and wrapped an arm around Zayn’s waist.
“I hate it when they fight,” one of them said, and it might have been Zayn, but the three of them kept each other warm and safe from what the fighting implied, not just for the band but for them, as a family.
It got worse.
Louis refused to sit beside Liam at any event; Liam wouldn’t speak a word to Louis no matter what the situation. The fans started to notice.
ONE DIRECTION BREAK UP IN NEAR FUTURE? the headlines read, as girls sobbed and tweeted things like ‘just kiss and make up!!’ and ‘I WILL DIEE IF 1 OF U LEAVES 1D :(‘ to both Louis and Liam, who largely ignored this onslaught, but sometimes tried to placate them with a bullshit ‘we’re still mates, there’s nothing to worry about! x’.
Zayn was starting to get worried. Harry wasn’t sleeping at all -- the bags under his eyes were so heavy, Liam wondered more than once if he weren’t getting sick. Niall carried most of the interviews now, deflecting questions that might lead to another argument later.
And Liam just kept shouting at Louis, and Louis just kept shouting back.
“They sound like my parents,” Harry said one night, curled in between Zayn and Niall’s arms. None of them could sleep, what with all the swearing and general anger coming from the other room. Zayn wondered why their manager wasn’t booking separate rooms. Maybe he thought they’d just get over it as quickly as it started. Seeing as Louis was now yelling that maybe Liam shouldn’t even have been brought back to life at birth, Zayn thought it very unlikely.
Niall agreed. “All they need now is to --”
“Start fighting over the kids.”
“Yeah.”
Harry and Niall laughed humourlessly. Zayn, whose parents were still together and happy enough, couldn’t empathise as well as he’d like to, and stayed quiet.
“This is all your fault -- you’re giving Harry nightmares!”
“I’m not the one snapping at Niall for everything he does! Come on, he’s only trying to make things better!”
“Maybe things would be better if you would just --”
“If I would just what, Louis?”
All three of them giggled; so that’s what they were, Zayn supposed. The kids stuck in the middle of an impending divorce.
“I wonder if they’re going to make us choose,” said Harry, and suddenly it wasn’t so funny.
See, Zayn could put up with this if Liam and Louis were in some kind of relationship, because god knew it was normal to throw plates at your significant other’s head in a fury, according to television, but this was not normal behaviour for friends. When Louis got pissed at any of the others, he would give them his own special form of silent treatment until they broke down and apologised, despite not knowing what they’d done half the time and Liam -- well, Liam didn’t get angry. Liam got cross, and stern, but he was Daddy Direction, that was his job.
Niall made a joke in an interview that Louis had opted out of, claiming sickness, that ‘Mum and Dad Direction are in a spat’, but that didn’t go over so well, and only Harry laughed, and Liam gave him a Look and god, Zayn just wants everyone to go back to the way they used to be.
He honestly never thought he’d miss the days where Louis and Harry would interrupt his shower with silly-string, but he does.
(He had found, though, that sleeping without Niall and Harry tucked into him was a lot more difficult than he expected. It wasn’t impossible, because Zayn was, like, sleep’s number one fan, he’d bought a t-shirt and illegally downloaded the album and had considered the logistics of marrying sleep, but, yeah.)
“This has got to fucking stop.”
Four eyes flickered up to Zayn, then down again at their respective breakfasts. Niall had barely touched his bacon and Harry’d just looked plain miserable, curled by the window of the restaurant like if things got too bad he could just roll out, and then Louis had reached for the salt at the same time Liam had, and then things went silent, and over the past year or so of his life Zayn had very much started to hate the quiet, so he slammed his glass of apple juice down and glared at them.
“No, look at me,” he insisted, grabbing Liam’s chin and turning him. Louis looked up, brow furrowed in a way that just looked wrong.
Harry said, “Zayn, don’t.”
“You don’t mean that,” Zayn snapped, “seeing as you cried last night over them, didn’t you? When you thought we were sleeping?” Both Harry and Louis flinched, but Zayn wasn’t going to stop now. He dug his fingers into Liam’s jaw, like maybe if he pressed hard enough he could make him see sense. “That’s what it is, then. The two of you are a ‘them’ and the three of us are a ‘we’, but that’s not right, because we’re a band and everything, but more than that, we’re friends.”
Liam tried to talk, but Zayn cut across him with a, “Shut up. Seriously. I don’t know what your problem is with Louis, except that there is suddenly quite a lot of them. The two of you are acting like parents who are too stubborn to get a divorce.”
The last word hung in the air and Louis visibly shrunk into himself.
“We didn’t --”
“We just --”
Zayn stood up and left before either of them could even try to explain. He felt Niall at his shoulder and could hear Harry climbing over Louis to get out of the booth.
Wonderful. Now maybe Mum and Dad could talk.
“Sorry I told them you cried,” Zayn muttered into Harry’s ear. Harry scoffed a little.
“I didn’t cry.”
Niall opened his mouth to argue the point, but the door opened before he could. Liam and Louis paused in the doorway, both of them starting to smile.
“Is this,” Louis asked, “how you’ve all been sleeping? Like, every night?” They made noises of assent, not bothering to sit up or actually speak to their bandmate. Louis was, of course, undeterred. “And I’m the one who supposedly screams homosexual.”
“You often do scream ‘homosexual’,” Harry pointed out.
Waving his hand as though literally brushing the topic away, Louis sat on the edge of the bed. He reminded Zayn eerily of his own mother, which, now that he imagined it, was a hilarious mental image that he would have to share with the boys at a future point in time. He could totally see Louis opening a storybook and reading to them like they were children huddled from a thunderstorm.
He fought back a grin; this probably wasn’t the best time.
“We’re sorry,” Liam said.
“Very sorry,” Louis added, clutching Niall’s leg like they would just say ‘nope, you don’t seem sorry enough’ and kick him out.
They probably wanted to say more -- probably had a whole speech planned out, that Liam had written and made Louis memorise, except Louis would’ve just improvised most of it and made Liam’s eyes roll and then there would’ve been tears from someone and it sure as hell wouldn’t have been Zayn, that’s for sure -- but Zayn honestly just didn’t want to hear it, so he sat up and pulled Louis on top of Harry without any warning. Harry groaned, complaining about how heavy Louis was and they should know this, he’s on them all the time; and Niall is gesturing for Liam to jump on the bed, too.
It’s not all right, Zayn knew. There was still the issue of Louis not getting enough solos and, well, Liam has never quite been able to handle Louis’ sense of humour, but at least they’re trying.
He fell asleep in the dogpile of his bandmates (it’d be fabulous if he’d be able to call them that for a while to go) and kind of hoped he’d still be able to breathe with Louis’ hair all in his face.