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"You know, when you said 'come join a club', I imagined, like, twelve people sitting around talking about being an expat or some shit." Louis looked distinctly unimpressed as Liam leeched onto his side. "I don't do people, man. This is weird."
"There's only, like, fifty people here," Louis sighed, dropping Liam into one of the chairs in the circle. "It's a good group, I promise. I've been doing this for years; you'll have fun."
Liam audibly gulped, and Louis rolled his eyes. "Look, you said it yourself – you need to get out and meet people. You can't spend your entire college career hiding in the library."
"I like the library," Liam pouted, but he had said it himself – he was in his third year and he hadn't made a single friend outside of Louis, who as it seemed some days, knew more than three quarters of the entire college.
"Just shut up and get a name tag," Louis sighed, pointing to the sign-in table where a group of people had collected and were fighting over the coloured markers. Liam took a deep breath; he reminded himself that aside from Louis, he'd never met anyone in the room before – he had a blank slate. Everything was going to be just fine.
He made his way over to the table and grabbed a nametag. It was one of those cheap stick-on ones that didn't actually stick well to clothing they sold in packs of 100 for $1.50 at the dollar store. Liam grabbed the nearest marker, a purple one, and scrawled his name across the sticker, right under the "Hello, my name is…" before peeling it carefully from the backing and smacking it on the right side of his t-shirt.
"See, that wasn't so hard," Louis grinned as Liam picked his way across the room back to him.
"Says you," Liam groaned, but Louis wasn't even there to hear it, already whisked away into another conversation by his other friends. Liam hovered awkwardly and eventually just sat down on a chair again, pleased to find there were at least a few other people who didn't know anyone in the group and were seated, playing with their phones or pencil cases.
"Alright everybody," a loud voice pierced through the rising chatter. "It's 5:30 – we need to get started. Everyone find a seat please." Liam watched as the group slowly dispersed from around the sign-in table and found seats in the circle of chairs.
The woman who ran the group, who later introduced herself as Perrie, passed out a few large boxes and said, "These are your binders. You're expected to bring them to every weekly meeting—inside you'll find our monthly schedule, as well as volunteer and leadership opportunities." As she prattled on about the upcoming events (a BBQ, a social night, a pub crawl), Liam looked around the room.
It was a social club for expats, or international students – there was only one major rule of the club, and that was to speak English so everyone could understand. Well, Liam thought, at least he could do that.
At the front of the room, Perrie introduced the support staff that would sit in on the occasional meetings and talked about fundraising that would be done throughout the semester. In fact, Liam tuned most of it out, instead observing the people around the room, already laughing and joking like they'd known each other forever. Liam felt like an idiot for trying to butt his way into a well-established circle of friends, but he clenched his jaw, curled his toes in his shoes, and said nothing.
Perrie was interrupted by the classroom door opening, mid-way through introducing Harry, another student leader of the club, about twenty minutes into the meeting. When Liam looked toward the cause of the commotion, his eyes widened and his heart dropped to his toes faster than it had that time his building's elevator broke down and plummeted three floors before it stopped.
A man that could only be described as a walking demi-god strutted through the door; despite the autumn wind curling leaves into everyone's hair, his hair was that perfect wind-tossed ruffled look. He wore a long black pea coat on top of the white t-shirt that stretched taunt across his chest. Between the thin lips, warm olive skin, the stubble on his chin and his sharp cheekbones, Liam would not believe the man was anything but a high-class model who stumbled into the wrong building when looking for his photo shoot.
"Sorry I'm late, Pez," the guy said, and Liam's heart shot from his toes all the way up into his throat, because this man, this walking, talking, godly creature was British. In fact, Liam thought his accent sounded a bit like he was from the north; his imagination suddenly flooded with images of this man with snow dusting his hair and – and oh, he was kissing Perrie on the cheek and embracing her in what looked like a rib-crushing hug.
Liam peeled his eyes from the man and stared at his shoes instead, because of course this man would lay his affections on a girl as beautiful as Perrie – who whistled to regain the group's attention and smiled blindingly at the room. "Everyone, this is my partner in crime, Zayn – he's the one to talk to if you have any questions about volunteer work or how to get started with organizing an event."
"He's also an awful footie player, so don't invite him to the sports night," an Irish voice calls from the circle, and laughter flutters through the room as a delicious pink blush rises in Zayn's cheeks despite his wide grin. Liam chewed his lip and not-so-subtly watched Zayn scuffed his toe into the ground and flipped his middle finger in the direction of the Irish lad when Perrie turned her head.
Perrie only talked a bit longer before they were separated into groups for team building exercises. At first, Liam felt a lot like he was back in primary school as they made posters and presented about where they were from, but as the evening moved on, he found himself opening up and talking to many different people from various places around the world.
By the end of the night, he had acquired a handful of new Facebook friends and a few phone numbers as well. "See, it wasn't all bad, right?" Louis grinned, throwing an arm over Liam's shoulder, interrupting his conversation with Niall, the Irish lad who'd spoken out earlier (he and Liam had been in a group together and had hit it off right away).
"I don't know what you're talking about; it was terrible – you're terrible and everyone here is terrible," Liam said with a grin as he shrugged Louis' arm off over his shoulder.
"Tell me about it; don't know why I keep coming back," Niall snorted as he peeled his nametag off his chest and crumpled it into a ball, tossing it across the room at Harry. Liam noticed he was one of the few people remaining with his nametag on, so he peeled his off as well, sticking it onto the corner of his binder so nobody could mistake it as theirs if he left it lying about.
"You come back for the food," Louis said, looking pointedly at the handful of cookies clutched in Niall's right hand. He shrugged.
"Yeah, you're right. I can't say no to free food."
"You're ridiculous," Louis sighed fondly. "Did you want to help me clean up the other classroom we used earlier? There's, like, feathers and stuff everywhere from the poster making activity."
"Yeah, sure," Liam agreed, tossing his binder on top of his bag at the back corner of the classroom. "Let's do it."
Louis and Liam went to the other classroom, and Niall and Perrie joined them not too long after with a garbage bag for the loose art supplies. They stayed until the other forty or so people in the club had gone home, and after crawling around on all fours peeling sequins and feathers from the classroom floor, Liam felt rightly exhausted.
"Are you taking the bus?" Niall asked Louis, who nodded, and they both waved goodbye to Liam who would be walking as he lived nearby. He slowly lumbered over to his stuff in the corner after offering to help Perrie, who said she only needed to lock up. As he grabbed his bag and binder, he noticed something that wasn't there before.
Underneath his own nametag stuck in the corner was someone else's nametag; Zayn's nametag, in fact. It overlapped Liam's a bit at the base and someone had scrawled a messy plus sign connecting the two. Right next to Zayn's name, someone had drawn a fat, red heart. Liam's face grew hot as he fumbled the binder and nearly dropped it to the ground.
"You alright?" Perrie called. Liam nodded and hastily shoved the binder into his bag.
"Yeah, s'all good, Perrie. See you next week at the meeting," he choked out, and then he fled the room.
He paced his room for three hours once he got inside. He practically wore through his carpet wondering if he'd been that obvious – if someone had caught him staring when Hurricane Zayn came bursting through the doors.
He sat down, only to stand up again, and then sit in another chair, before standing up and crossing the room for a millionth time. "He doesn't like you. He doesn't even know who you are," Liam reminded himself of the fact that he hadn't even swallowed his pride and introduced himself to the man earlier that night.
Finally, he huffed aloud, dropped his tired body onto his bed, and closed his eyes. However, instead of sleep, he lay awake, familiarizing himself with the dark insides of his bedroom, counting invisible starts on his ceiling and waiting – waiting for sleep to come. It didn't.
He thought about Zayn; he thought about how Zayn would look in the mornings, hair mussed and eyes half-lidded, lying sleepily in Liam's arms. He thought about how Zayn would feel under his fingers, soft and pliant, his accent lilting, thick and rough as he gasped Liam's name. He thought about Zayn, wearing glasses with his head bent over a textbook as he studied for finals, or curled on a sofa with a mug of tea.
And Liam still thought about Zayn, Zayn in every and any situation in life, Zayn doing regular day-to-day things as he slipped an anxious, trembling hand down the flat planes of his abs and down past the waistband of his boxers, wrapping a hand around himself, already half-hard and leaking from the tip.
He tugged a bit, wrapping his hand around himself – pulled himself to full hardness, wondering what Zayn's hand would feel like in place of his own, wondering about slender fingers and soft palms. He could imagine Zayn being nothing but the softest under all the sharp edges of his wit and brevity.
The hand that wasn't down his pants curled into his soft sheets; his fingers tightened around the cotton. His mouth fell open with a wounded gasp as he thought about what Zayn would look like under him, his soft whimpers, and the way his harsh breath would trace roughly over Liam's lips like a windstorm of brittle, desert sand on a hot day.
When he came, wet and sticky and panting for breath, he still thought about Zayn – about Zayn's thin, chapped lips, and sideways smile, and bright golden brown eyes that glistened under the fluorescent classroom lights. He still thought about Zayn, until the early hours of morning and the sun fought its way to the surface of his world – and he thought about Zayn some more.
By the time he dragged himself out of bed, washed the dried cum from the hair on his chest, and made it to school, he was nearly late for his first class. He slept through it in a daze; he traced the grooves scarring the wooden desk and once again, he thought about Zayn.
For someone so ordinary, and Liam knew there was no way he could be anything more, Zayn seemed to be extraordinary. Once Liam had seen him once, bursting through the doors late to the first club meeting, he was everywhere, like a piece of the backdrop that had suddenly acquired a spotlight.
He was sitting on Liam's Business Law and Ethics class while marking papers for another class he assisted in. He was perched on the chain-link fence surrounding the parking lot smoking a cigarette and talking flippantly with a tittering girl who seemed ignorant to his constant eye-rolling. He was strolling casually down the hallway as Liam rushed between one class to the next, or holding the door open for him as Liam tripped over his own feet trying to enter the other building across campus.
Zayn was there, his hair perfect or otherwise smashed under a beanie, his lean and wiry body resting against a doorframe, chatting with another student, and then the next day he was still there, typing away at a computer in Liam's favourite corner of the lab. It was like once he'd noticed Zayn, Liam couldn't not notice Zayn.
The week went like that; it went by in moments of Zayn. It went by in a rolling windstorm of fleeting, longing glances from a distance, and many classes where he left his binder in his bag, embarrassed about the way his fingers danced over the letters on the stick-on nametag, like the more he did it, the more likely the person would come to life in front of him.
And Liam, like Liam was, had few acquaintances even after joining the club, so there was nobody to pester him about the extra nametag that showed up on his binder. There was nobody to ask how his weekend was, how his club was, how is- oh, no, there was Louis.
"What've you got there?" Louis asked, the first time Liam saw him for longer than a breath since the day of the meeting.
"Just the binder from the club meeting," Liam said, and for the first time in his life, Louis let the conversation move on when Liam just wanted Louis to keep prodding, to keep asking, to bring up a reason for him to ask about Zayn.
"Just talk to him," Liam told himself over the weekend when he saw Zayn and a few friends wandering through the park. "Just talk to him," Liam repeated, when he saw Zayn riding his skateboard down the hill near his house. "Just talk to him," Liam said, but Zayn was there, then like the whistling wind in the trees, in the next moment he was gone. "Just talk to him," Liam learned, wasn't as easy in practice.
He made it until the next meeting, hands shaking every time he caught a glimpse of the Greek God walking through the hallway, fingers wrapped around his books as he took haphazard steps, never quite looking beyond his feet. Liam watched the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the way he tugged at his sleeve when he was nervous, and the way he scuffed his toe into the ground when he was anxious.
Liam watched.
And it was creepy, he knew, like he was looking through a window into a world he hadn't quite managed to enter yet, but he wanted – God, Liam could not remember wanting so bad before in his life, especially not late and night, when he fell asleep only after wrapping a thick hand around himself under the blankets, late at night when he lay alone and awake, with Zayn on his mind. Since the hurricane, Zayn had always been on his mind.
At the next meeting, Perrie greeted him by name and a blush stained his cheeks – his heart thumped like it wanted to say, "Hey, I'm here, I'm still here – she remembers me, they remember you – you're special, Liam, you're special!" And Liam remembered why he joined a club, as Louis looped an arm around his shoulder, peered over to his binder, and laughed.
"Fuck man, who did that?" He asked, and Liam frowned, shaking his head.
"I have no clue, Louis."
"Funny," Louis smirked. "Bet you did that yourself. Bet you're drawing his name in hearts on all your notes." Liam wasn't, for the record – he hadn't stooped that low yet. But he couldn't promise he hadn't been doing that in the steam-fogged mirror after his shower.
"I'm going to show him," Liam said, a burst of confidence flooding him from Perrie's warm smile and Louis' friendly pat on the back.
"That's right, you show him, Liam," Louis cackled, walking away to greet some other friends of his. Liam frowned, unsure of what to do since Louis had left him behind – he wandered over to Perrie for a bit, but she seemed preoccupied with administrative things. He sighed, settled himself on a chair in the circle, and watched the people mingle around him.
Zayn came in a lot quieter than he did at the last meeting, arriving on time and drifting through the door like a warm summer breeze. Liam swallowed his pride; knew there was an 80% chance of choking on his tongue, but he stumbled over to the table where Zayn was putting his name on another one of those cheap stick-on nametags with a black marker.
Liam tried to approach him in a non-threatening manner, trying to wear a facial expression that said "Hey, how are you?" instead of one that said, "I've been creeping on you and touching myself to thoughts of you for a week." He took a nametag from the pile, picking up the black marker, turning to Zayn as he was pressing the nametag to his chest.
"Oh, hi, you're Zayn – uh, I'm Liam," he introduced himself awkwardly, hoping his voice didn't sound too jittery. He expected a nervous smile or awkward staring in return, but instead, Zayn smiled, open and inviting as he shook Liam's hand. His palm was warm and smooth, like Liam imagined. He looked down, and a chill slid up his spine at the sight of the slim fingers wrapped around his own.
"Nice to meet you, Liam," Zayn said, and waited patiently like he knew Liam had a reason to approach him.
"So, uh, your name showed up on my binder after the meeting last week," Liam sputtered out, and Zayn raised an eyebrow.
"Really? Let me see," he demanded, and Liam could do nothing but comply, rushing past the table and toward his bag, awkwardly fumbling with his things to pull the binder out from where he'd left it before heading to the table. The binder was just as he'd left it – Liam + Zayn ♥. His face flushed, looking down at the two nametags instead of Zayn's face. Zayn's face was too close. He smelled really good.
"Do you, uh, do you know who did this?" Liam asked, expecting confusion. Instead, Zayn just laughed, smiling as he thumbed over the nametag with his name on it.
"Well, this is my writing of course," he said, pointing to the nametag, "Since I was wearing it at the last meeting. I was wondering where it went. This, though," he said, pointing to the plus sign and heart, "is Niall's artwork."
"Oh," Liam forced a laugh, stunned. "Of course, it'd been just a dumb prank between friends. What else could it have been? "That's, uh cool. I'm just going to leave this here 'cause it's funny then," Liam said, gesturing to the sticker. Zayn smiled crookedly.
"Cool," he said, and then he was gone with the wind, off to talk to Perrie, leaving Liam standing in his dust.
He saw Zayn again later when they're put in the same group for the first activity where they're forced to get to know each other better. "In this group, we're going to play a game," Zayn told them, smiling and handing out tape and paper. We all tape pages on our backs and write things about the person on their back, okay?"
"Sounds fun," One of the girls in the small group says, and before Liam knows it, Zayn's offering to help him tape his paper onto his t-shirt.
"Thanks," he stuttered out, and wished he could harness Zayn's warmth and confidence through that brief touch to his back. He made his way through the group slowly, and it wasn't until near the end of the game that he and Zayn were given the chance to write on each other.
Liam's face flushed red as he looked at Zayn's paper to write "nice smile" or something equally dumb, only to see someone had scrawled "Liam's Boyfriend" in fat letters across the page. Liam's cheeks immediately flushed, but he said nothing as his hands shook. He finally steadied them enough to write "Greek God" at the base of the page, before turning around for Zayn to write on his own back.
As they read out their sheets (surprise, surprise, someone had scrawled "Property of Zayn Malik" across Liam's page) and learned what their peers thought of each other, Liam found himself frowning at the paper as the entire group laughed at his and Zayn's.
The smaller groups were then supposed to reform into the larger group following a quick break. "Do you mind if I sit here?" Zayn asked, gesturing to the empty chair at Liam's right. He shook his head, and forced an awkward smile.
"Go ahead."
"I'm just going to talk to Pez quickly," Zayn said, walking off. A few minutes later, a chatty group of students ended up talking to Liam's immediate right, and before he knew how to say the chair was taken, someone had sat on it and Liam wasn't one to rudely interrupt conversations over a chair that Zayn wasn't currently in anyway. When Zayn returned to the classroom, he frowned at Liam, but quickly found a seat elsewhere.
They didn't get a chance to talk again until after the meeting, when Liam once again stayed behind to help tidy up. He started stacking the chairs in the back of the room, and was carefully moving the tables back where they belonged when Zayn approached him. Perrie was off doing administrative work for the club and Louis was long gone – Liam was alone and defenseless.
"Hey, about earlier," Zayn said, and Liam flushed automatically, turning red from the base of his neck to the tips of his ears before Zayn had even finished his sentence.
"Yeah?" He asked, settling his hands on the table to stop the nervous shaking.
"If those jokes bothered you, just let one of us know, okay? I know Niall and his friends can get a bit carried away sometimes, and you looked really uncomfortable earlier." Liam flushed even redder if possible at the fact that Zayn had even noticed he looked the slightest bit uncomfortable at all.
"The jokes are fine," Liam said, though they did fall a bit too close to the truth. "I'm just uncomfortable because I don't know the group well yet," he lied through his teeth, because he wasn't about to tell Zayn to his face that he was uncomfortable because of his ridiculously attractive face.
"There'll be plenty of time for that through the semester," Zayn said softly, and Liam nodded, moving aside the last desk with Zayn's help. "I'm walking this way," he told Liam after they'd gathered their things and locked up the classroom.
"Me too," Liam grinned at the coincidence, and the two of them started down the path together side by side.
"So, uh, when you saw my name on your binder, did you know who I was?" Zayn asked softly as they walked together. Liam shrugged, and then nodded.
"Yeah, you came in and Perrie introduced you – you kissed her on the cheek. I think everyone noticed you."
"Really? I think most people had tuned her out by that point – hell, most people tune her out as soon as she opens her mouth. She loves to captain this ship, this club, for sure, but like, man… Sometimes she just drones on forever."
"It's true," Liam admitted with a giggle. "Did, uh, did you know who I was when I introduced myself?" he asked suddenly, biting his lip.
"I didn't," Zayn said truthfully, smiling at Liam, "so I'm glad you introduced yourself – I probably would've done it at some point anyway. I like trying to get to know everyone who's involved with the club. You get a certain bond going, especially with people who are clearly from the same part of the world as you," Zayn winked, and Liam felt a bit like he was melting.
They talked a bit about where they were from; Liam learned a lot about Bradford in the twenty minute walk back to his apartment, and it wasn't until he was at the driveway that he realized Zayn had walked him home. "So, this is me," Liam said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously with the hand that wasn't trying to fish his keys from his pocket.
"Cool," Zayn said, smiling at Liam. "It was good to chat with you, yeah? Do you want to do it again sometime, grab some coffee-"
"Yes," Liam interrupted Zayn before he could finish his sentence, and Zayn laughed, the carefree sound startling Liam into blushing again.
"Give me your number," Zayn said, reaching for Liam's phone to program his own number in. "I'll call you, okay?"
"Okay," Liam agreed; his cheeks felt like they would crack from all the excess smiling he was doing. "I look forward to it."
"Me too," Zayn said, reaching forward and letting their fingers brush as they exchanged phones again. It was like an electric shock, like a stroke of lightning, like a gust of cold wind – and then it was over, and Zayn was walking away, back down the road he came, the wind whistling in the trees like it wanted to chase him home.
(Liam asked Perrie about Zayn walking with him when he ran into her the next day. She looked confused when she said he rode his motorcycle to school on club days and always parked in the lot right next to the building where they held meetings, and took off the minute after he locked up.)
(They were dating for two months before Liam forgot his brain-to-mouth filter one morning and in a post-orgasm haze coming off the high of morning blowjobs, he said, "I jerked off thinking about you for a week after the first time I saw you." And if he knew it would elicit such a lovely, high-pitched noise of despair from Zayn before getting his wrists pinned above his head on his soft, messy sheets, well… He might have mentioned it sooner.)