Chapter Text
Liam Payne is thirteen years old when he gets his first kiss. The girl's name is Shelley Jenkins and he's at her thirteenth birthday party—the year when boys and girls suddenly stopped having cooties and inviting members of the opposite sex to parties was cool.
He knows that Shelley has had a huge crush on him for a long time (a long time at this point in his life was for a few weeks or so) from the way she bats her crystal blue eyes furiously at him and stands up taller around him and wears her extra tight t-shirts and short, plaid mini-skirts, and that his best friend Andy (who has been his best friend since third grade) has told him, “Shelley is totally hot, so you should go for it.” To be quite honest, Liam feels uncomfortable with the whole situation, but he doesn't really have a choice.
It's Shelley's thirteenth birthday and she's invited six boys and five girls, which comes out to an even twelve. Her parents are downstairs talking with family, and Shelley has ushered all of her guests into her room where they've all awkwardly arranged themselves into a lopsided circle when Sheila Montgomery suggests that they play Seven Minutes in Heaven.
Liam's never played Seven Minutes in Heaven and he's confused on the concept of what he's supposed to do because he's never kissed a girl and he's never really thought much about it, to be honest, but everybody (Liam included) knows that the birthday girl has been harboring feelings for Liam, and so Liam finds himself in a dark closet with Shelley.
The fabric of the bottom of Shelley's dress is over his Liam's knee and a pair of wedged sandals on the floor of her closet is under his butt and it's unbearably hot since his mother told him he needed to wear his suit, but he feels Shelley edge even closer to him.
“Well,” she says slightly impatiently, after they've been sitting awkwardly for the first minute without saying anything. She bats her eyelashes suggestively at him—her eyes are ringed haphazardly with blue eyeshadow and thick mascara the way a thirteen year-old usually applies makeup and he knows that Andy would find this attractive but Liam is just reminded of the sad clown he saw at the circus when he was eight. “Aren't you gonna do it?”
“Do what?” Liam asks stupidly. He and feel the sweat trickling around the collar of his neck and his tie feels like it's cutting off his air supply and it's too hot in this dark, musty closet where he's with a girl he doesn't know too well but had to go to her birthday because his dad thought a gentleman should always accept an invitation from a lady and his mom is friends with Mrs. Jenkins.
“Kiss me, silly,” Shelley flips her straight blonde hair behind her shoulder and giggles like she thinks he's the funniest thing in the world, but Liam doesn't find anything funny.
He doesn't say that though.
Instead, he leans over awkwardly, his lips coming into close proximity with Shelley's and Shelley grabs his tie with as much force as a newly teenaged girl can muster and pulls him in.
The kiss is uncomfortable and weird and Liam can feel the bile rising in his throat before Shelley breaks the kiss. He feels like he's drowning and alarms go off in his head screaming that this is wrong, and when Shelley finally releases his tie from her grasp and smiles shyly at him, he throws up all over her pretty pink shoes.
Shelley screams and her friends and parents come running and Liam sits there, flushed maroon in embarrassment. He offers to clean up the vomit from Shelley's closet floor and apologizes profusely, saying that he doesn't feel well and maybe he should go home. He waits patiently for his ride, his heart thudding furiously in his chest and his cheeks flush with humiliation, and when his mom comes to pick him up, he tells her he wants to sleep and doesn't want to talk about it.
At home in his bed with practical grey sheets and a practical dark blue comforter, Liam twists and turns and tries to forget how uncomfortable and wrong he felt in Shelley's closet—no, not the closet—but with her. He tries to forget the light print of Shelley's lips against his and tries to forget how hot it was and how she was breathing heavily and how her face was pink with delight. He tries to forget how her eyes closed as she kissed him and he tries to forget the slight curve of her newly developing chest and her long, slender legs.
But most of all, he tries to convince himself that he was really ill and that was the reason he threw up on her.
The next week, Andy confronts Liam at school and laughs at him until he nearly cries in mirth. Liam flames red and tries to lie and tell Andy he had food poisoning.
Also, to Liam's great relief, Shelley decides that she no longer has a crush on him. She also doesn't invite Liam to her birthday next year, and Liam is fine with that.
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Liam doesn't really like popularity too much, but it chose him and, just like when he was shoved into the closet with Shelley Jenkins, he doesn't really have a choice.
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He starts wondering if maybe he should start looking for a new best friend, but he's known Andy for so many years now, and he thinks it's just probably a phase of teenage boys. Which makes him wonder a little bit why he's not going through this phase, but he rolls with the status quo and what he's comfortable with and decides not to ask questions.
While the teenage boys in Liam's grade look for the crease of girls' breasts when they're wearing low-cut shirts and stare at long, slender legs of scantily clad girls in short skirts, Liam feels uncomfortable and tends to shift his eyes away. This is perceived as gentle and endearing to many of the girls, and so Liam finds himself as the object of several girls' desires (Andy has more suitors, of course. It seems as though the worse Andy treats the opposite sex, the more they want him, which, to Liam, makes no sense in the slightest. Like sure, he's not bad-looking with his long hair and what-not, but Liam doesn't really get it). Liam finds himself uncomfortable with all the attention but because of it, he's more popular and has more friends and superficial relationships, and he thinks superficial relationships might be better than none at all, so he doesn't say anything.
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He meets Danielle in his English class his sophomore year of high school. She looks fragile, but is headstrong, bold, and he realizes that he wants to know her after she has a verbal battle with their teacher about the existence of love in Romeo and Juliet.
Mrs. Watkins, the Honors English II teacher, is explaining to the class that the love Romeo and Juliet felt for each other was simply lust—after all, they had only known each other for a mere three days and were being fueled by a mutual attraction rather than love.
Liam sees Danielle's pale, slightly freckled, slender arm raise before he sees Danielle herself. Mrs. Watkins looks surprised, but calls on her.
“Yes, Danielle?”
And then there is an answer from a light, airy voice, but one a passioned one.
“Mrs. Watkins, not to overstep, but have you ever been in love? Truly, madly, deeply in love, I mean. Because I believe that Romeo and Juliet were in love—you don't simply throw your reservations and passions to the wind because of lust. You may be young and stupid, but you don't kill yourself unless you're really in love. Unless you really feel something for the other person, and you may call me naïve but I believe what they had for each other was real on maybe a level that we're not capable of understanding, but a level that existed nonetheless.”
Mrs. Watkins look bemused at the reply, probably not suspecting it from such a docile-looking girl, but cracks a smile. “Very good point, Miss Peazer. Anybody else have anything they want to add?”
And Liam sneaks a look at Danielle out of the corner of his eyes, and she sees him looking and their eyes meet.
She winks at him.
Liam is slightly abashed and frazzled. He folds his hands into his lap and spends the rest of the class looking at them, and at the end of class, as he methodically stuffs his books into his backpack, he feels a light touch on his shoulder.
“Hi there,” comes Danielle's voice, and Liam takes in her tumbled curliques of hair, her wide eyes.
“Hi,” he manages, offering his hand, “I'm Liam. Liam Payne.”
“I know,” she says, taking his extended hand. “Danielle. Danielle Peazer.”
“I know,” Liam stumbles, and then flames with embarrassment.
“You want to come over sometime?” Danielle offers next, overlooking his comment with a teasing smile.
And Liam smiles back. Says “yes.”
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Danielle's family is Guyanese and loud and boisterous, and they pull Liam in and yell and scream and make him eat a bunch of exotic lamb and meat and kabob dishes that he's tried before with his parents and his sisters, but never like this. The warmth of culture and the rush that comes as everybody yells and hugs him and presses kisses to his cheek is intoxicating, daring, so unlike what Liam is used to with his composed, stiff, rigid environment at home. His own father stays hidden in gilded desks, dark inked pens, the haven of his office, and Danielle's dad is loud and openly affectionate, pulling Danielle close to him for a hug and a kiss.
Danielle seems to sense Liam's discomfort and eventually (much to his relief), suggests that they get out of here. Liam nods eagerly, and somehow they end up in Danielle's bedroom and she leans in and kisses him. It's his second kiss and he's fifteen and he's with a girl unlike him every possible way—she's opinionated, open, emotional, graceful; he's quiet, shy, introverted, a little clumsy.
“Wow,” she says breathlessly, “that was something.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, and it is something and he doesn't really know how he feels and he's pretty sure he doesn't feel the way she does, but his head is spinning a bit from all the rich food he's consumed and Danielle is really pretty so maybe, he forces himself to think, he really likes her.
They make it official about two weeks later.
Luckily for Liam, Danielle stays his girlfriend and likes him for much longer than Shelley does.
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When he returns to Danielle, pressing a carefully measured kiss against her cheek, he apologizes and tells her he doesn't feel well and that he'll see her tomorrow.
It's only when he's back at home in his car parked in his own driveway that he realizes she was talking about sex.
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He's frustrated and alarmed and terrified beyond belief, but the main reason for him being so is that he cannot figure out, for the life of him, why. Of course Danielle wants to have sex. All normal, healthy, teenage couples should want to. And maybe Liam was hoping to maybe wait until he was married, or maybe wait for sometime in his life where he was more stable, or maybe waiting for someone who wasn't—isn't—her.
And as he racks his brain for a thought of anyone he could want, anyone he might be attracted more than to her, he draws blank after blank after blank, until there's the flush of a toilet and he comes out.
Liam doesn't know Zayn Malik in person, but he knows of him, of course. Everyone knows Zayn. Zayn, with his, dark, charcoal-coloured quiff of hair and high, fragile cheekbones and almost feminine facial structure. Zayn with his wide, liquid amber eyes, and eyelashes that go on for days, and his slender fingers. But of course, all of these facts become obsolete when you know the truth. All of this become unimportant details when you take into account the one thing that everyone in the school knows about him: Zayn Malik is gay.
Liam has never thought about gay people very much. It has never been very relevant to his life—after all, he doesn't know any gay people, except for Zayn, of course, but he doesn't really know Zayn at all. Zayn is in his PreCalculus class, but the only time he's actually talked to the other boy is when they stood next to each other in line for the pencil sharpener and Liam accidentally bumped into him and said, “Sorry,” and Zayn flashed a quick, appreciative, but timid smile and murmured, “No worries.”
Then Liam went back to his seat where Tyler, one of the guys who is Andy's friends but not really Liam's at all, but kind of Liam's by association, hissed, “Did the faggot touch you?” and a bunch of the guys laughed and Liam saw Zayn flinch with pain, but Liam didn't say anything because he's not very confrontational and he doesn't know Zayn anyways. But he didn't laugh; he just sat there in his seat and did his PreCalculus worksheet because Liam has been raised to do what he's supposed to do.
But now they're in the bathroom and Liam is wiping tears of anxiety from his eyes and shaking visibly in front of the bathroom mirror and Zayn places a steady hand over Liam's, the way that Danielle might.
“Hey,” he says simply, “you alright?”
And Liam nods, even though he's not alright at all, and everything is messed up beyond belief and he's confused out of his mind. But he nods, and Zayn's hand over his is comforting and gives him chills and spikes up and down his arm.
Zayn stands there for about a minute, just with his hand over Liam's, his calm, glittery eyes boring holes into Liam's face, but Liam doesn't find it creepy at all. Just reassuring.
When Zayn leaves, Liam looks down at his arm where the hairs are raised amidst goosebumps.
He doesn't even have to take out his pocketknife.
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And as he moves onto images, his breath catches in his throat. He scrolls through the glaring pictures of men and women in clearly sexual, explicitly “inappropriate” acts that make his face flush with embarrassment, but he ends up on one page of two men grasping each other almost desperately, one slender and small and the other more wiry and muscular, gently wrapped in an passioned kiss, their eyes closed and smiles at the edges of both or their mouths. He swallows hard and tries to fight the tears spiking at his eyes and his embarrassingly hardened arousal and the undeniable attraction he feels.
This can't be happening.
There's a noise from outside and he hears his mother call, “Liam? Sweetheart?”
Hurriedly, Liam stuffs the list of books into his pocket and opens his email in a new window on his computer screen.
After greeting his mother and helping her unload the groceries from her car, he returns to his computer. He clears his browser history, just in case.
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The librarian gives him a disdainful look, and he tries to forget her eyes boring deep into his and the way she purses her lips as she clearly judges him.
He tells her it's for a school project. He's pretty sure she doesn't believe him, and her suspicion makes the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
This can't be right.
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He takes out a hardcover book hesitantly, and flips open to the first chapter. The big title is “ARE YOU CONFUSED?” and he starts shaking and almost closes the book right then and there.
But instead, he digs deep down and searches for some courage, and decides to start reading. He finishes the first book in less than an hour. He moves onto the next and the one after, and after he's devoured three of them in a row, he closes them and hides them in his sock drawer, clambers onto his bed and pulls his covers over him. His heart is beating wildly and he remembers the feeling of Zayn's hand on his and the spark that it sent through him and tears are pricking at his eyes and before he knows it he's crying, desperate muffled sobs because this cannot happen to him. He's Liam Payne, he's expected to hold up the family name, he's he only son that can carry on the family name, he's masculine and refined and successful like his father, he can't be...
It's probably just a phase, right? It's just a phase. He's just confused and he'll grow out of it, he tells himself, none of this is real. He'll be fine. Just watch, he'll see Danielle tomorrow and she is beautiful everything and he will see that and everything will go back to normal.
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Liam doesn't pick up his phone or answer his texts for a whole week. At school, he tells Danielle that his parents grounded him for talking back and took his phone away, and somewhat suspiciously, she buys it. She doesn't press the issue too much—she's busy with dance practice, and other conflicts as well. He makes a conscious effort to avoid sitting by her at lunch, claiming that he has a lot of tests to study for. This is a blatant lie; Liam has never struggled in school in his life.
But...
He doesn't know what to do. Maybe he's just afraid that when he sees her again, he'll realize he's wrong.
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Liam feels nauseous, but he's a gentleman and in spite of recent self-revelations, he's still Danielle's boyfriend, so he says yes.
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Inside, she carefully assembles the lilies into a glass vase, offers him some water. He politely refuses, clapping his hands nervously at his sides, and she grins wolfishly at him and tells him she knows what he's waiting for. She grabs him by the hand and drags him up to her room and shuts the door behind her and pulls him onto her bed.
And then there are Danielle's hands on the clasp of his pants, and Liam starts to hyperventilate. He strains and thrives to keep his breath steady and almost forcefully pushes her away.
“Can we just not?” he manages breathlessly, his throat closing around his words. He can hear himself start to choke up and all he can think is No, not right now. This is all wrong.
“Okay,” Danielle says simply, letting go of his pants. Liam knows she's frustrated, even though she's trying to hide it, when she pushes her hand through her silky brown hair and her forehead lines with distress. “What's wrong, Liam? Am I doing something wrong?” Her voice is sad and self-accusatory and Liam hurts so much because this is wrong. He doesn't want to hurt her.
Liam buries his head in his hands, the words I think I might be gay fading on his lips. Instead, he manages to mutter, “I don't think I can do this anymore.”
Danielle cocks her head, her lashes dark and prominent and framing her huge brown eyes. A few freckles dot her tanned face. Her lip trembles a little, but she looks at him resolutely, impassive.
“When did you know?” she asks him, her voice softening towards the end of her question. Gentle.
And Liam realizes that she knows.
“I'm sorry,” he answers in a broken voice instead of answering her question, but she looks at him. Takes his hand.
“No, I'm sorry,” Danielle whispers, an apology on her lips. She squeezes his hand, and the dam bursts and the tears come and he's clinging onto her like a child because he is so, so scared and this is all wrong and he doesn't know what to do. He sobs openly, brokenly into her shoulder, and he feels her hands wrap protectively around him.
“It's okay,” she shushes, rubbing smooth circles on his back. “It's okay,” she croons and holds him as he cries to the point where his eyes will feel swollen and he'll be sleepy the next day.
And, sitting there with the girl who he loves but never really loved at all, his head buried into her soft blouse, Liam tries to convince himself, in that moment, that it'll be okay. That it's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
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Liam has declined three girls, who roll their eyes and declare that they didn't want to go to the dance with him anyways, and he's getting a reputation as an unstable heartbreaker, when he starts to think he's had enough.
Danielle suggests they could just go as friends, if he'd like, but he knows that it would hurt her, and he can't bring himself to hurt her any more than he already has, so he politely declines and tells her that she should go with Jeremy Hyde, since he's nice and sweet and single and has asked her. (Liam knows that Jeremy will no doubt be Danielle's rebound but he doesn't have the right to say anything since he broke her heart). Danielle looks worried, but he can also see the relief, so he's happy he's let her know that she doesn't have to take care of him anymore.
To be honest, Liam has been eyeing Zayn. Zayn Malik with his tousled hair reminiscent of Alexander the Great, and his flawless, golden skin and the fact that he's gay and Liam is trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he's finding a male beautiful. The fact that he can't take his eyes off the ridges on Zayn's broody, full lips, and his dark, crescent-shaped eyebrows, and his wide, almost doe-like eyes that are reminiscent of Danielle's. There's something so inherently forbidden about the whole thing, and Liam finds himself slipping Zayn a note during English class.
Zayn,
Can we talk?
-Liam
He gets a reply as Zayn subtly slips him a yellow post-it at the end of class.
Meet me at the bleachers after school. 3:30.
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His hands are shaking uncontrollably and he paces nervously back and forth before sitting down. He fumbles with his cellphone, willing it to send him a message from Andy or one of the other boys to get him out of this mess, get him out of this meeting—get him out of this confrontation. His mind reels as he thinks of ways to tell Zayn he can't meet today—why can't they try tomorrow, and then there are the steady tread of foosteps and Zayn appears behind him, shock of hair and all. Zayn's wearing a dark maroon varsity jacket, and Liam smiles at that because he doesn't think Zayn plays sports—maybe baseball—but he doesn't know the boy well enough, and then the fact that Zayn's making butterflies flood his stomach is unnerving, so the smile slips off his face as quickly as it appears.
Liam watches as Zayn sits down on a bleacher seat and pats the place next to him with his tanned, slender arm. He feels the hairs on his arm raise in anxiety, and makes his way slowly next to Zayn. He sits down, feeling as though his movements are traitorous, wrong.
They sit there in silence. It's so quiet that Liam can hear the quiet whispers of Zayn's breathing, and the sound of his own heart slamming in his chest fills his ears.
“What's going on?” Zayn asks casually, glancing at him. His voice is lower than Liam expected it, with an accent hat's not unpleasant in the slightest—just... different. Liam glances up to see Zayn's eyes, wells of candied pecans surrounded in inky eyelashes.
“I...” Liam's voice breaks, and he struggles to regain control. His dad would be so disappointed in the way he's conducting the conversation. He's been taught to command authority in his voice, but instead, his tone is weak and wavery. “I...” and it comes out in a tiny whimper, “I think I might be gay.”
He cowers, burying his face in his hands immediately, and in the darkness his interlaced fingers, he can still feel Zayn's eyes on him.
Zayn's voice is calm, nonchalant even. “And...?”
Liam raises his head, connects his eyes with Zayn's face hopelessly. “What do you mean 'and?'”
Zayn stares at him expectantly, almost amusedly. “It's not that big of a deal, Liam, there are worse things that could happen-”
“I... I can't be,” Liam musters, interrupting Zayn. “You don't understand—things like this don't happen to me—I-”
Zayn's gaze is even. Liam pretends he's not counting Zayn's eyelashes. The boy's complexion reminds Liam a lot of Danielle's, but Zayn's personality is much different than hers. Danielle is upfront, loud, courageous. Zayn is quieter, more reserved. Like a wallflower. Like Liam.
“Not that there's anything wrong with being gay-” Liam blanches and backpedals. Why is he talking to the only openly gay boy in the school about this? Actually, who else would he talk to? This makes sense—he's so confused, he's so damn terrified...
“Why do you think you're gay?” Zayn asks, tilting his head. A strand of black hair falls across his forehead and Liam fights the urge to reach out with his fingers and touch it to see if it's as soft as he imagines it to be.
“I... I...” Liam stammers, trying to sort through the thoughts flying through his mind. “How did you know you were gay?”
Zayn chuckles, a mirthless laugh. He waves his fingers around delicately. “You want the long story or the short story?”
“Um...” Liam tugs at his bottom lip with his teeth. “Uh...”
“I was showering after gym class one day, and I glanced over and saw Harry Styles's dick and I got hard,” Zayn says, shrugging a shoulder.
Liam's mouth drops open. “I... uh... I guess...”
Zayn smirks.
“I didn't do anything like that!” Liam protests. He feels suddenly relieved—of course he can't be gay. He's not stereotypically effeminate, flamboyant; he's never gone actively searching for penis; he's not gay at all.
Zayn gives Liam a testy stare. His face looks disappointed and there's a slight scowl even. “Gay people aren't made from molds, Liam.”
“What do you mean?” Liam asks, bewildered.
“Not every gay boy has to like shopping and dancing and singing and acting like a fairy,” Zayn says, a bit angrily. “Just like not all straight girls like to wear dresses or the color pink and not all straight boys like to play sports and drive cars. Gay people aren't just cut out like carbon copies of one another; they're not cookie cutter shapes that are all alike. Gay people are people too, Liam.”
“I know,” Liam sputters, “I just thought that maybe I'm just a bit confused and I-”
That's when Zayn leans in and kisses him.
Liam is aware of both of Zayn's hands pressed on his cheeks, the keening noise in his own throat, the heavy feeling of Zayn's lips on his, Zayn's tongue running over his bottom lip, asking for entrance. He's surprised when he gives it to the boy, let's Zayn slot his tongue against the roof of his mouth, licking the inside of his teeth.
Liam can't breathe, can't think; he feels like his brain is sliding against his skull, the world's been thrown upside down, and then he's breaking the kiss, struggling to catch his breath, eyes wide in disbelief.
“I...” he blusters, “why did you, how could you-”
“You were confused.” Zayn's expression is testy, and there's no smile on his face now; he absently shrugs a shoulder. “I thought I'd give you a hand.”
“Y-you... you can't do that,” Liam spits, barely able to hear his voice over the rampant beating of his heart. “I... F-fuck off,” he says quickly, and turns on his heels to leave.
He cries himself to sleep that night, dreams haunted by a skillfull tongue and dark eyebrows and a quiff of hair. The name Zayn, and how he thinks he might just want it to be his own.