Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Everyone thinks that they know Liam Payne, the star player on the football team and one of the most popular guy’s at school.

He’s been dating a beautiful cheerleader named Jade for what seems like forever.

He wears expensive clothes and is an overall great guy.

The thing is though, is that that’s all they really know about him – that he plays football, has a girlfriend and looks fit.

No one really knows the real Liam except for his three closest friends – Jade, Perrie, and Zayn.

-&-

Liam’s life hadn’t been as easy as some people thought it had.

His father passed away when he was a kid, leaving his mother to raise Liam all by herself.

They ended up having to move from their big house in an expensive neighborhood to a small flat in the city.

His mother, Karen, had to work hard to support the two of them so she couldn’t be around as much as she wished she could be.

Since Liam was only a kid, he couldn’t be left alone at home when his mother was out working, so she left him at their neighbor’s house when she had to work.

Next door to them was a quirky little family.

They were divorcees that had gotten remarried to each other and both of them had a kid from their previous marriages.

Lucky enough for Liam, they had a son and a daughter who were both Liam’s age.

Niall, the boy, had come from Ireland with his father. Sometimes Liam couldn’t understand what Niall was saying because of his strong accent, but he liked to play football just like Liam did so they got on well.

Perrie, the girl, was a sweet English girl, but if you said that to her, she’d probably punch you. Perrie wanted to play with the boys, not the girls. Except for Jade. Jade was always Perrie’s exception.

Jade was Perrie’s best friend and Liam had befriended her as well as the step-siblings because she was always over at Perrie and Niall’s place. Jade was the total opposite as Perrie. She was very girly and was into ballet and stuff like that but Perrie liked her anyway.

Because of the move, Liam also had to switch schools, so he started school in the Fall with his three new friends.

It was there at the new school that he met Zayn.

Zayn was a new student that year as well, his family moving from Bradford.

He was a quiet boy with dark hair and tanned skin. He had a batman lunch bag with him on the first day of school and Liam immediately wanted to befriend him.

Lucky for Liam, they were beside each other in the alphabet and they were sat together in the teacher’s seating plan for the year.

Liam would always try to strike up a conversation with him but it wasn’t easy as Zayn was extremely shy. Eventually Zayn started conversing back though when Liam would try to talk to him and he started hanging out with Liam’s group of friends.

The five friends would hang out all the time. They would share secrets and have sleepovers and get into trouble. They were an odd bunch of kids since they were all quite different from each other, but Liam was so happy to have them as friends.

-&-

Fast forward to a few years later and they are in juniors in high school and they’ve all still managed to remain good friends. They are all in the popular crowd and people are envious of them.

Liam, Niall, and Zayn were all on the football team at school.

Zayn had never been into football until he met Liam, who taught him how to play and now he’s one of their best players.

Perrie and Jade were on the cheerleading squad.

Nobody understood how Jade managed to convince Perrie to join the cheerleading squad but somehow it happened.

As for romance, four of them were in relationships and one was not.

The one that wasn’t was Niall who wasn’t into anything serious. He just wanted to have fun and kiss lots of girls without any kind of commitment.

And as for the other four, Liam and Jade paired up and so did Zayn and Perrie.

But the thing was, was that it wasn’t really like that.

Nobody knew this, not even Niall, but it wasn’t really Liam / Jade and Zayn / Perrie.

Liam and Zayn were together and Perrie and Jade were together.

-&-

When they hit the age of twelve, Niall and the other boys at school had started lusting after the girls, but Liam didn’t understand why. He didn’t think of girls in the way that they were describing them and only wanted to be friends with them and nothing more.

It wasn’t too long after that when he started to get those type of feelings that the other boys were talking about. Except his feelings were a bit different because they weren’t for girls.

He realized by the age of thirteen that he fancied boys, especially Zayn. He kept all of these thoughts hidden though because the other boys apparently weren’t too keen on ‘lads liking lads’.

Liam had started hearing words like ‘gay’ and ‘faggot’ around the school and everyone seemed to use it in a derogatory way. He didn’t even know what those words meant until he decided to look it up online one day. It was at that moment that he realized that he was gay himself.

It was awkward when the other kids at school would use those words after that because it made him feel insecure about himself.

When they turned fourteen, there were two lads in their grade that decided to come out as a couple. Their names were Harry and Louis.

They were both in the drama club and liked to sing and they loved each other.

Nobody else seemed to be a fan of their relationship though because they got severely bullied for it every single day since coming out with it.

Everyone would call them horrible names and there were even a few times where one or both would get beaten up.

Liam felt horrible for them and wished that he could help them out somehow but he was too scared of everyone discovering his own sexuality.

Liam vowed to never join in on the bullying of the two boys and Zayn never said a word about them either. Liam had heard Niall use some derogatory language towards Harry and Louis though and that hurt his feelings a lot and made him scared to come out. He didn’t want to lose his friends.

-&-

One day, it was just Liam and Zayn hanging out together alone. They were sitting in Liam’s living room playing video games, some game where they were racing each other in cars.

“I saw Perrie and Jade kissing,” Zayn spoke up randomly.

Zayn’s comment made Liam lose focus and crash his in-game car into a wall.

“What?” Liam asked, pausing the game to face Zayn.

“Yeah, it was a few days ago,” Zayn told him. “They didn’t see me but I saw them.”

Liam was shocked. “Are you sure it was them?”

“Yeah, positive,” Zayn nodded. He chuckled at Liam’s shocked facial expression. “You can’t say that you didn’t see this coming Liam. You know they’ve been into each other for years.”

“No, I honestly never saw this coming,” Liam said.

“I could always tell. It’s the way that they look at each other, you know. You can tell that they really fancy each other a lot,” Zayn explained and then smiled. “They look at each other kind of the way that you look at me.”

Liam could feel his face redden and his heart beat faster. “I, um, don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled, not giving Zayn any eye contact.

“Yes you do,” Zayn laughed quietly and took Liam’s hand into his own, “and it’s okay, because I’m pretty sure that I look at you in the exact same way.”

Liam looked down at their hands and then up to Zayn. He couldn’t believe that this was actually happening.

“Please say something,” Zayn pleaded.

Liam couldn’t say anything though. He was speechless; words would not come out of his mouth.

So he decided to respond to Zayn by kissing him lightly on the lips.

Zayn smiled when Liam pulled back from their short but sweet kiss.

“I really like you, Liam,” Zayn said, running his fingers on his free hand nervously through his hair.

“I really like you too,” Liam admitted.

“Could I kiss you again?” Zayn asked and Liam nodded. Their second kiss was a bit longer and less light than the first.

“So what do we do now?” Liam asked nervously when they pulled back.

“Kiss again,” Zayn smirked, pulling Liam into another kiss.

-&-

After that day, they started a relationship. It was a secret relationship, of course, because they were scared of what the other kids at school might think and Zayn was pretty sure that his father might kill him if he ever found out.

But otherwise, they were happy together.

They would do what they could out in public, like they went to see a lot of movies because they could hold hands in the dark and nobody would notice, but they spent a lot of time up in Liam’s bedroom.

It was great because Liam’s mother worked a lot so they had the place to themselves a lot of the time.

They made a mistake though a few months into their relationship.

They were hanging out with Perrie, Jade, and Niall one day when Niall pointed out a mark on Liam’s neck that Liam had forgot was even there.

“Is that a hickey?” Niall questioned him. He moved towards Liam to examine his neck. “Holy shit, it totally is,” he determined. “Does our Liam have a girlfriend?” he asked with a fake gasp.

“Uh,” Liam started, beginning to panic. He had no idea how he was going to get himself out of this one because he knew that Niall wasn’t going to drop the subject until Liam told him every detail of it.

“I gave it to him,” Jade spoke up. Everyone looked towards her, confused.

“Oh, cool,” Niall said, shutting up because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to talk to Liam about it right there in front of Jade, but he not-so-subtly gave Liam a wink before changing the subject to something else.

Everyone else remained quiet and just let Niall ramble on about whatever. They all seemed to be stuck on why Jade would lie for Liam.

Eventually, Niall excused himself to go to the bathroom, and as soon as he left and was out of earshot, a new conversation began.

“What the fuck?” Perrie hissed at Jade.

“Yeah, what the fuck?” Liam repeated.

“Oh shut up, Liam,” Jade said, rolling her eyes, and ignoring Perrie for the moment. “I know that the two of you,” she motioned to Liam and Zayn, “are together. I was just helping you out.”

Liam and Zayn both went completely red in the face.

“What?!” Perrie gasped.

“I saw them together,” Jade told Perrie with a smile.

“Yeah, well I saw the two of you together as well,” Zayn added. “Saw you ladies kissing a few months ago.”

“Oh god,” Perrie said, putting her hands in front of her face.

“But you’re actually together then?” Jade asked. “Like boyfriends?”

“Yeah,” Liam sighed. There was no point in hiding it from them now.

Zayn smiled at him and put his hand over top of Liam’s.

“Oh my god, you two are so cute,” Perrie exclaimed.

They both smiled. “What about you ladies?” Zayn asked. “Are you girlfriends?”

“Duh,” Jade said and Perrie laughed. “You can’t tell anyone though because my parents will kill me,” Jade said more seriously.

“Oh same here,” Zayn agreed. “Your secret is safe with us.”

“What are we gonna do about Niall guys?” Liam asked. “He probably thinks that me and Jade are shagging now.”

Jade laughed. “You could be my fake boyfriend,” she joked.

“Oh my god, that’s a great idea,” Perrie exclaimed.

“It is?” Jade asked, scrunching up her face in confusion. “I was kidding, Per.”

“No, it’d be perfect,” Perrie explained. “Like you know how your parents are always on you about how you never have a boyfriend and how they think that I’m trying to turn you against men and whatnot, so like what if you brought Liam home. They’d stop questioning us, yeah?”

“It’d also look good at school too,” Zayn added, turning to Liam. “I mean, we’ve seen how the other lads treat Harry and Louis, right?”

“True,” Liam said slowly. “But if we’re gonna do this, then you two,” he motioned to Zayn and Perrie, “have to fake date as well.”

“Yes! We can go on double dates!” Jade squealed.

“It’s totally perfect!” Perrie said excitedly.

It was then that they had to shut up because they could hear Niall coming back down the stairs.

“What did I miss?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Liam told him, hoping that he’d take that as an answer.

“Alright,” Niall shrugged and then moved on to ask who wanted to play video games.

Everyone smiled at each other while Niall turned to turn on the game console.

This could really work out, Liam thought to himself.

-&-

And it really did work out.

Shortly after they agreed to dating, Liam and Jade made their ‘relationship’ public.

And not too long after that, Zayn and Perrie began ‘dating’ as well.

They were all worried about people buying it or not, but everyone did.

And even better, both Jade and Zayn got their parents off their back about the issue of love and romance by bringing Liam and Perrie home.

They kept it a secret amongst the four of them, and not even Niall knew. He didn’t even suspect anything either, and Liam figured that he must have terrible gaydar or was blind or something.

Both ‘couples’ would appear to go on double dates every Friday and everyone thought that it was so cute and so fifties of them.

They would go to their usual restaurant for dinner, and while it looked like the ‘couples’ were sitting across from their ‘lover’, staring into each other’s eyes, it was really that they would be sitting beside their actual lover, holding hands under the table.

At school, they were the ‘it couples’. Everyone wanted to have a relationship like Liam and Jade’s or like Zayn and Perrie’s.

They would all hang out and laugh about how ridiculous everyone was, but they didn’t mind because they all knew that it was way better to stay hidden for now.

And everything was perfect, until it wasn’t.