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"Fans are starting to notice. We need to get Liam a new cover up. It's for the good of the band." '
For the good of the band, my ass,' Liam thinks to himself as he drags the girl along behind him. They told him to hold her hand, they didn't say he had to act like he liked it.
"Can we slow down a bit? I'm gonna trip if you keep pulling me," she chuckles lightly and yeah she's sweet and he feels kind of bad because this is just a job to her and he's not making it easy but he hates this. He really truly, hates it. Everything feels wrong because the hand in his doesn't fit right like Zayn's does and she's too short and her shoulders aren't broad enough and there's no stubble on her cheeks and Liam just wants to fly back to England and into his boyfriends arms but he can't because it's for the good of the god damned band.
"Sorry, I just wanna get out of here already," he admits and lets his pace slow down slightly, enough for her to catch up to him.
"Your management said they were just gonna get a photo of us holding hands and then we'd be done for the day. Then you can call him," she sing-songs. He words have him stopping mid-step and whipping his head around to face her. She has a cheeky grin on her face and an eyebrow raised as if she's challenging him to say she's wrong.
"Am I that obvious?" He frowns.
"Babe, you're ridiculously easy to read," she laughs. "You look like a kicked puppy. You are so lost without him, it's ridiculous. But adorable." She bumps their shoulders together and smiles sympathetically. Her pity for him makes him wanna jump in front of a moving car, if there's anything Liam hates, its being pitied. "Chin up, buttercup. You'll see him soon enough."
And yeah she's right, but he knows that once Zayn reads the articles and sees the photos, he'll be just as devastated as he is. Zayn takes having to hide their relationship even harder than Liam does. After "Payzer" broke up, they had the greatest celebration sex in the history of celebration sex. They thought that it was one step closer to them being able to come out. They saw it as management saying, "we accept you. It'll be okay." But then the forced Zayn to get Perrie tattooed on his arm, (which was cruel even for them) and now Liam has a "rumored girlfriend" to get the fans all riled up and it feels like a punch to the gut.
"Come on," she says, breaking him out of his thoughts. "Time to go back."
As predicted, Zayn is less than thrilled when Liam tells him about Sophia via skype. Zayn knew Liam was supposed to be spotted with her, he just didn't know it would escalate so quickly.
"Fans think you were cheating on Dani with her the whole time," he explains noncommittally, (the voice he uses to pretend he doesn't care when he totally does).
"Glad to know they think so highly of me," Liam grumbles with a roll of his eyes.
"They're just trying to make sense of how long you've been seeing her. Management doesn't think about back stories when they throw a dumb girl into the mix. Just look at Lou and El, they say Harry introduced them but there's zero pics of them ever hanging out. Fans aren't as oblivious as they think."
"Yeah more than half of them already know about Lou and Haz, some of them even know about us. I wish we could just say ‘YOU WERE RIGHT THE WHOLE TIME’ and then everyone would be happy. The fans would be happy, Louis and Harry would be happy," he smiles softly and whispers, "we'd be happy...."
Zayn returns it and places a hand on the laptop screen, pretending that his boyfriend isn't thousands of miles away and that the small barrier keeping them a part has disappeared, "We are, baby. They just don't know it."
Liam puts his own hand on his laptop, and they probably look ridiculous to onlookers but he doesn't really care."I just wanna tell the world that you're mine boy," Liam sings loud and off key, causing them both to chuckle at his stupidity.
"Remember when you were writing it and you sang it to me for the first time?" Zayn says after a moment of comfortable silence between the two.
"Course. I also remember you tearing up and blaming it on allergies," he teases. "It was allergies! I swear it! Anyway, I'm still pissed off that they didn't credit you as a writer for that song. You worked hard on it," Zayn frowns.
"Guess they just thought it'd be too obvious," he shrugs. "Its whatever, babe Doesn't really matter to me. As long as you know the truth."
"Yeah, I do." They're silent once again, just taking in each other, memorizing the other's face as if they haven't done it a million times already, before they have to say goodbye once again and have to sleep in their big empty beds alone. "I love you, Liam. We're gonna get through this, just like we always do."
Liam knows they will, it wasnt even a question. Its just that they shouldn’t even have to get through anything in the first place. They don’t deserve that. They deserve to be in each others arms privately, publically, whenever the fuck they want but they can’t and that just really sucks. Liam wants to say all of that to Zayn, tell him to just fuck it all and make out in front of millions of paps and tell the world yeah we're dating, get over it! But he can’t, so instead he gives his boyfriend the least defeated smile he can muster and replies, "I know, Zayn. I love you too."