Chapter Text
CHAPTER 4: THE BALCONY
LIAM
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
Liam’s parents were standing in the doorway, bedecked in their maroon and white gear. With his mother’s hair pulled back into a jaunty ponytail and his father’s coal grey sweater, they could easily have passed for college sweethearts, the same way they’d probably looked when they’d been students, if not for the graying at both their temples.
‘No, I’m fine.” Liam said for the twentieth time.
“You could come sit with us,” his mother said. “We’re all the way across the field from the student section. Nobody would bother you.”
“Except the cameras.” His father said. His mother smacked his arm.
His father had taken to Liam’s coming out about as well as he’d expected. At first, he’d given him a huge hug, one that seemed to have lasted forever. Then for a day or so, he’d just left him alone, emerging at the door to his bedroom with everything from offers to watch the recorded basketball games to a glass of Bourbon.
Then, Liam kept finding random gay stuff all over the house. A pride flag next to the college banner on the mantlepiece. Queer literature next to his father’s legal tomes.
Liam had actually come into his study the night before to see him on a webpage that said The Lingo of the Gay community: A Beginner’s Guide. And like his mother, his father had agreed that the board of regents didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to taking away his mother’s presidency.
His mother had been on the phone constantly with her lawyer and publicist, trying to ensure that the narrative was at least spun in the least harmful way possible. It was because of her that the previous day’s edition of The Scarlet had boasted the headline “Who is Cinderella?” Rather than the numerous other pejorative terms the staff had originally come up with.
Liam had been following the story.
Intermittently.
Against his parents’ advice.
For every comment that said something along the lines of what his parents were telling him, for every supportive message from one of his frat brothers, there were a dozen that were violent and angry, or that expressed cold judgement and disappointment. One person wrote, “It discourages me that the values of the president’s family are so far compromised, and she has done nothing to address them.”
Today, he’d let himself look up the news on his laptop, where he was less likely to redownload his social media or examine the hundreds of text messages he’d been ignoring.
Liam had checked his Instagram just after he’d gotten home from the café a week ago, the kiss buzzing around in his head. He didn’t want to return to the frat house, with the taste of Zayn still on his lips, intermingling with the memories of kissing the boy dressed as Cinderella until it was difficult to distinguish the two.
He’d lost over a thousand followers, and his dms were riddled with messages. He got to the first couple lines of the first one, “Can’t believe u let a man’s dick—” before he Deactivated. He’d followed that by deleting Snapchat, Twitter, even the old Facebook account he’d started when he was thirteen.
Maybe he’d be okay enough eventually to have a social media presence again. But for now, he kept his phone across the room, on silent, unplugged. To keep his hands busy, he was taking copious notes from his chemistry textbook, fiddling with the Rubix cube on his father’s desk, and flipping between reruns of Gotham and Love Island.
Anything to keep away the silence. Anything to turn the noise up.
Being at home, with all of his distractions, was the only thing keeping him from breaking down. The last place he wanted to be was a football game, with forty thousand people whose eyes would follow him, with the jumbotron flicking to his parents’ box every few seconds. He was home, he was safe.
But somehow, in the midst of the biggest crisis of his life, he still couldn’t stop thinking about Zayn.
You fucking asshole.
Now that he’d finally admitted it to himself, now that everyone knew and there was no going back, it was like those memories had been dialed to eleven. He kept replaying that night in the café in his head. When he wasn’t doing that, he was reliving his kiss with “Cinderella,” wondering if he’d made it home okay, trying to remember if there was anything familiar about those deep, dark eyes, that golden brown skin.
The memories didn’t bring the same feelings as when he recounted his hookups with girls.
It felt different—not better or worse.
It made his head spin.
Once his parents left, Liam darted upstairs and picked up his phone from where he’d left it in his room, swiping through the myriad of message and email notifications without bothering to open them.
It only took him a few minutes to see the list in the Scarlet’s digital edition. “OMG! Which one of these hunks might be Liam Payne’s Cinderella?”
Liam clicked and scrolled through the slideshow, reading each caption feverishly, trying to gauge the height, the hair color, the precise shade of those brown eyes.
But none of their imaginary suitors were the right one, Liam was sure of it. He had felt something when he’d seen Cinderella. He was sure he’d recognize him in an instant.
Liam took his phone back to the couch and sat down, dusting off the debris of chip crumbs from last night’s Love Island marathon. How was he supposed to find this person? Did he even want to be found? Did it matter?
For something to do, Liam flipped on the game. The score was 17 to 21, with his school leading.
Liam looked at his phone again. There was a new message from Andy: Wish you were here. Love you.
Liam felt a little better, but he still couldn’t join the rest of his brothers. He wasn’t ready to explain, wasn’t ready to have so many people either pretend to understand or be downright hostile. He’d been around for the jokes they made when they were drunk, the way none of them really had any queer friends. He knew that even if they said they were okay with it, they wouldn’t be. Some of them might even be moving now to take away his presidency.
Let them, Liam thought. I can’t go back to being that person anyway.
What he needed, Liam decided, was to get out of the house. To be somewhere he didn’t have to explain himself, where no one really cared what the president of Kappa Phi Nu did. To avoid the underlying need to scroll through photos of every guy at the university or Google himself and read the vitriol on the Gossip sites.
“Hello?” the voice came through almost as a shout, competing to be heard over the cacophony of laugher and music.
“Hey, it’s Liam. Liam Payne.” Liam said, surprised. He hadn’t meant to dial the number, but the person on the other end was already shushing everyone around him.
“LIAM!” Louis screeched, and Liam winced, holding the phone back from his ear. “What’re you doing, man? Come on over.”
Liam fought to be heard over the music. “I just wanted to talk, but if you’re busy.”
“Hang on.”
There was a slamming noise, and the other end suddenly became much quieter. “Watch party,” Louis said. “What’s up?”
“It can wait—”
But again, Louis seemed to detect something in Liam’s voice that even he didn’t notice. “Come on over,” he said. “I’ll sober up by the time the game’s over, and we can talk.’
“I don’t really want to crash your party.”
“Seriously, dude. Head over.”
Liam pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked at the notifications on his phone again. HE had already been bombarded with a dozen more texts, another news article, even more speculation, even less people who would see him as anything but a sideshow…
“What’s the address?”
ZAYN
Zayn liked one thing about working on game day: the quiet.
It was noon, and the game had just started. Everyone was either in a bar or at the stadium, getting increasingly drunk regardless of the game’s outcome. When it ended in a few hours, everyone would crowd into all the local bars.
It was going to be a slow day, apart from the families with kids that would come in, harried mothers that nearly swayed on their feet from exhaustion dragging their kids behind them.
That would be its own chaos, but for right now, all was quiet. The town was the university. And the university was football.
It was nice to be here in the stillness, the calm tint of sunlight through the windows, wiping down the bar with a rag to look busy every few minutes.
He had spent almost ten minutes watching Snapchat stories, as Louis invited what looked like the entirety of the liberal arts department over for a rager. They were all quoting Shakespeare and discussing Foucault in between shots of tequila, and it looked like somebody had managed to get their hands on absinthe.
Louis had already made Zayn promise to actually join the party this time (Zayn usually spent Louis’ parties in his bedroom, headphones on and the door locked), but he was planning to just stay here after his shift and draw. With everything that had happened over the last few days, he just wanted to lay low. Forget about the masquerade ball, and that night, and –
Zayn took a deep breath. It kept sneaking up on him. He would be fine, just doing work or talking, and something would remind him of Liam. It didn’t even take much. The cast of light on the wall of the café, a picture he must have taken in his mind without knowing. A guy who walked through the door who looked just a little bit like him, standing the way Liam stood, shifting his weight.
When he’d come in to work the morning after, and the lights had still been dimmed, the mop propped against the wall where Zayn had forgotten to put it away, the force of the feeling had made his knees buckle. It was suddenly a Herculean effort just to get across the room.
A week later, he tried not to look at the corner where they had been kissing, the spot on the bar where Liam had lifted him.
But every time his gaze drifted, he would go through the whole thing all over again. The talk. Kissing. Liam’s lips against his neck.
Get. The fuck. Out.
Zayn shuddered.
He didn’t understand why people said that you only had feelings for someone in your chest, or your stomach. Zayn’s entire body was on edge, like the day after he’d pulled an all-nighter for a paper and drank way too much espresso, in preparation of opening and closing the shop that night. Or the first time he’d ever been drunk, and it had started to feel like he was swimming through a room that had lost its air, that he was moving in slow motion, his every limb painful and heavy.
Zayn didn’t know what to do about it. He’d had his heart broken before, but that wasn’t what this felt like. That had been a swift, clean slice. Easy to heal as it was easy to scar.
This was a slow fragmenting, cracks across his heart, his skeleton, his lungs. This was shards that made it hard to breathe, but just as often left him alone. This was normal until he saw an article, or heard a girl whispering on the quad, or just caught a glimpse of the Cinderella suit in his closet.
It had already happened twice today, brought on by the quiet. Nothing to distract him, so one moment, Zayn was getting coffee and checking over his homework and texting with Louis.
And in another, he was doubled over the sink, the knot in his stomach never ceasing, Liam’s face swimming behind his eyes.
Zayn took a deep breath. Let it out slowly.
He started to wipe the counter again, concentrating for the first time on the “Mellow Christian Sounds” playlist that Martha had running.
This, it turned out was even worse than thinking about Liam.
Zayn put in his headphones, about to start blasting Conan Gray until he felt normal again, when the bell tinkled, and a parade of customers rushed in.
He sighed. At least he’d be distracted for a little while.
LIAM
Louis lived in a maze of an apartment complex.
Liam had been driving around for ten minutes, and he still couldn’t figure out where Louis’ building was. It was just an array of tall, brick buildings that all looked virtually the same, some strung with Christmas lights even though it was just November.
Liam finally found building 38 and parked in one of the visitor spaces, then walked up to the door. At the walkway, he froze, wondering if he was doing the right thing. He didn’t know any of these people, and Louis had seemed pretty wasted, and what was he even going to say? “Hi, I’m Liam. I might be gay, but I think I’m probably more likely bi, and uh—I’m having an identity crisis? Pass the weed?”
Liam shook his head, kicking himself. He should just go home. He should just hole up in his parents’ house until Christmas break, where there was a never-ending cavalcade of reality shows and Madden and no need to think—
“Oh shit.”
Liam looked up.
A thin figure, his arms corded with tattoos, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, was staring at him from one of the balconies. He was wearing all black, and his hair was thick and luxurious, and—
“Zayn.” Liam let out his name like an exhale. “Hi-“
“Wait, are you here—” Zayn nudged the boy next to him, who Liam finally saw was smoking a joint, and pointed. “Is he yours?”
Louis grinned and waved. “I’m so glad you could make it! Come on up. Do you smoke?”
“I actually just wanted to—”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” Louis darted inside and Liam heard a door opening, and the rattle of feet down the stairs, before Louis emerged, wobbly but upright. He grabbed Liam by the arm, surprisingly strong for someone his size. “You have to meet everyone.”
“I just wanted to—” Liam tried to say again.
“Trust me. Everyone’s too fucked up to remember you anyway. I’m pretty sure Harry’s tripping too hard to even work his phone. There is literally no social risk.”
He tugged Liam up the stairs.
ZAYN
Zayn sat down against the balcony’s railing, trying to keep his hands from shaking. He took another drag of his cigarette, and a sip of the tequila-berry-concoction Harry had brought. Then he gagged and took a swig of water.
Liam Payne.
Zayn took another drag of his cigarette.
I’ll just stay out here until he leaves, Zayn thought. Liam had looked so uncomfortable, and he probably didn’t want to see Zayn again, and Louis was going to overwhelm him by introducing him to every gay liberal arts major in the entire school, and—
Yep. Zayn shivered slightly. He hadn’t brought his jacket, intending to only go for a smoke, and he’d already been out here for ten minutes, listening to Louis valiantly try to recall his sophomore thesis while stoned out of his mind (he kept referring to Marie Antoinette as “Kirsten Dunst”—it was sort of endearing), and anyway, he’d only come here because this was where he lived, and he’d been on his way to his room, and—
The door opened, and a couple came stumbling out, kissing. The girl tripped over Zayn’s sneakers, and Zayn had to keep her from falling.
Before she could say anything, Zayn rushed back inside, where a game of beer pong had been set up.
Harry and Louis were playing on one side, and Liam was alone on the other. The rest of the party was gathered around, watching. Some of them were even cheering as Liam sank another one, and Louis and Harry drank.
“Isn’t it unfair that he has to compete alone?” Zayn asked in a girl’s ear.
“He doesn’t need it.” The girl shouted back.
“Okay.” For a moment, Liam’s eyes met Zayn’s, and Zayn’s heart twisted up again. That same feeling was rushing over him.
Not good, Zayn thought.
He maneuvered to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He would make the rounds, say hello, look totally nonchalant about the fact that Liam was here, and then he’d go to bed.
But then he heard it.
“ZAYN!” Louis was shouting, so loud that it easy to hear him over the din of the music. Zayn groaned and downed his water. Whenever Louis wanted him at a party, it was never for anything good.
Zayn look across the kitchen counter to the living room, where a girl had taken Louis’ place in beer pong. Liam had his hat flipped backward on his head, and he seemed to be in his element, his eyes shining, his cheeks flushed.
Harry made a shot, and Liam drank it in one, his cheeks turning bright red.
Meanwhile, Louis had managed to, in spite of his size, bulldoze his way through the assembled crowd until he cornered Zayn against the refrigerator.
Before he could say anything, Zayn spoke, “I’m not playing beer pong with you. I’m going to bed.”
Louis was unfazed. “Go talk to him.”
“I can’t.”
“Look, I know it’s all a mess with him right now, but he’s a nice guy. I really don’t think he’ll be upset you haven’t told him. If anything, he’ll feel bad that he didn’t recognize you.”
“No.”
“Why are you always running from things?” Louis’ eyes were bloodshot, and he was slurring his words, but his tone was sincere. “Not everyone is going to walk out of your life. Not everyone is going to leave.” His gaze met Zayn’s meaningfully.
“Liam doesn’t want to see me, or talk to me. He just wants to forget I ever happened.”
“If he wanted to forget, he’d be with his frat brothers right now.”
Zayn pulled Louis into the corner, lowering his voice. “He didn’t recognize me. At the coffee shop, the day after the ball.”
“Well, you can’t expect him to,” Louis said reasonably. “It was daylight, nobody was drunk—”
“We—sort of made out..”
“You hooked up on the clock? I’m so proud of you!”
“And he still doesn’t recognize me.” Zayn said. “We’ve kissed twice, and they were the most fucking epic kisses of my entire life, and he—has no idea who I am. So I told him to fuck off.”
The smile slid off of Louis’ face. “Zayn—"
“Trust me. He doesn’t want anything to do with me.” Zayn felt his voice crack, and took another sip of water to conceal it.
Louis’ eyes softened. “Zayn, this doesn’t have to—”
“It’s hot in here.” Zayn cut him off. “I’m going outside.”
“Wait! What if I talk to him?”
“No.” Zayn felt his stomach flip again, and a wave of nausea went through him. “Just—don’t tell him, please. Don’t tell him anything.”
Louis tried to say something else, but Zayn had already rushed past him, back onto the balcony.
Thankfully, the couple was gone, nothing but a few stubbed out cigarettes and the joint Louis had abandoned.
Zayn leaned against the wall and sank down onto the ground, stretching his legs out across the dirty, ash-strewn concrete.
Then he lit another cigarette.
LIAM
Liam hadn’t had this much fun in a long time.
He hadn’t allowed himself to have this much fun.
He’d had to keep his guard up for years. Be drunk but not too drunk. Do something crazy but not too crazy. Never let anyone too close. Never give them a chance to guess.
And now, he was owning everyone at beer pong, and then somehow he was on the couch, his cheek nestled in some guy’s shoulder who smelled strongly of tequila, and it was utter bliss.
It was exactly what he needed.
The party had calmed down a little bit, and they were all sitting on Louis’ couch, crammed almost on top of each other. The conversation had dwindled, too. Instead of the long rants about Michel Foucault and Karl Marx that had begun the evening (Liam had been lost, and trying not to show it by agreeing with everyone, which turned out to be a nightmare), the conversation had devolved into pursuits that, luckily, made him feel less like he was the only person in class who hadn’t done the reading.
“All I’m saying is, if he wanted Anakin to be evil enough to kill younglings, he shouldn’t have made him that hot.” The girl next to Liam said. She was wearing dark purple lipstick, and she was staring intently into the eyes of her girlfriend, who was shaking her head bemusedly.
“You’re giving Lucas too much credit,” she said. “Star Wars is batshit crazy. That entire franchise never had a coherent, long thought-out plot in its entire life. Everything’s made up. It doesn’t matter.”
“Okay, hang on,” a guy interrupted. “You can’t say Star Wars doesn’t make sense. That’s like—”
But Liam was distracted from the conversation by someone poking his shoulder. He turned around. A guy with copious amounts of perfectly curling hair and an infectious smile was grinning at him.
Liam had seen him earlier, wrapping an arm around Louis during beer pong and making the other boy look tiny and adored by comparison. He was wearing black skinny jeans, a shirt that was only partway buttoned, leaving his incoherent array of tattoos on display.
There was something about him. The moment he walked into the room, it seemed like it had gotten brighter. It wasn’t just that he was beautiful, even though he was. He was—radiant.
“Having fun?” the boy asked.
“Trying to keep up,” Liam said awkwardly. “Is it bad if I say I don’t even remember the Star Wars movies?”
“Oh, don’t worry. They won’t remember a word of this conversation in the morning.” Harry gestured to the other partygoers, who were all in varying states of passed-out. Liam himself was feeling pleasantly sleepy, and he was thinking of calling an Uber to take him home. He could get his truck in the morning—
“My name’s Harry,” the boy said. “I’m Louis’ boyfriend.”
“I didn’t know he had a boyfriend.”
“Neither does he.” Harry said. “We haven’t had the talk yet. But it’s pretty inevitable at this point.”
“Oh. Uh—congratulations.”
The boy shrugged. “Anyway, I came to ask you—”
“Oh, I was planning to just grab an Uber home.” Liam said. “Really, tell Louis thanks, but—”
“Do you remember Zayn?”
“Zayn?” Liam looked around, realizing that, in all the revelry, he’d lost track of Zayn. “Of course I remember him!”
“You remember him from…” Harry tilted his head meaningfully.
Liam frowned. How could Harry think he wouldn’t remember being kissed in that café? He was pretty sure he was going to remember that kiss for the rest of his life.
“The coffee shop.” Liam said. “I think I sort of freaked him out.”
“Well, he does have cheekbones that can cut glass. He’s a lot to take in.”
“I feel so terrible. He must have felt so ambushed, and if anyone had seen—the whole Internet’s still trying to find Cinderella.”
Harry’s eyes darkened, and he opened his mouth to say something, but then—
“Harry!” Louis emerged from the balcony to squeeze onto the couch. “There you are.”
“I was just getting to know Liam.” Harry glanced at Louis meaningfully. “I was trying to talk to him about Zayn.”
“You were telling him about—”
“The coffee shop.” Harry said hastily. “I was just going to tell him that Zayn wanted to apologize.”
“Well,” Louis turned his blue eyes on Liam, giving him the uncomfortable feeling that he was being X-rayed. “Zayn is on the balcony. Have at it.”
Liam frowned. “I was just going to-- “
“Go.” Louis and Harry said together.
Liam must have been still pretty drunk, because he didn’t even protest as they both yanked him bodily to his feet and nearly shoved him back out onto the freezing balcony.
ZAYN
“Hey,” Liam said awkwardly.
Zayn was still sitting down, his back against the wall, his cigarette long since put out on the concrete and stubbed into the ashtray. Liam sat down beside him, his legs nearly reaching the edge through the balcony’s iron bars.
“What do you want?”
“Louis said you wanted to apologize?”
“Oh, right.” Zayn shook his head. “Sorry for being an ass. It’s just—”
“I kind of jumped you,” Liam said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to do that.” He looked out over the balcony, staring at the glowing headlights of a couple of cars as they swept into the parking lot. “It was—a rough week. I made you uncomfortable.”
“Oh I was into it.”
Zayn could feel Liam snap his head around to look at him. “You were?”
Zayn shook his head, amused in spite of himself. “Of course I was.”
“Then why…” Liam trailed off, and Zayn could hear the hurt in his voice.
He wanted to make it better. To kiss and apologize and give them their happy ending. Wasn’t that what balconies were for? Declarations, promises?
The truth?
But here he was, silhouetted in moonlight, his skin silver, shivering.
And Liam was drunk, his lips puffy, his eyes bright.
And he still had no idea who Zayn was.
Liam had just come out to the entire school. He was losing his presidency. Half his frat brothers probably wanted him out of the fraternity, and the other half were probably planning religious interventions.
The last thing he needed was some stupid barista, bringing up the night that had ruined his life all over again.
“I shouldn’t have kissed you back,” Zayn said instead. “I’m just not interested in being with someone like you. Someone who’s still figuring it out.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not that I don’t like you, Liam.” Zayn turned to look at him, and nearly threw all caution to the wind at the sight of him, dark eyes gleaming wetly, his chest rising and falling in the night air, his lower lip starting to tremble. “I really, really like you. But I’ve done the coming out thing. All of my friends have, and I’m just not willing to go back there. I don’t want to go through all that again. I need someone more—”
“On your level.” Liam finished. “I get it.”
I don’t, Zayn thought. It’s all bullshit. Bullshit, that we’re not in the same place. Bullshit that the timing is off. Can’t you see that I’m lying? Can’t you tell that timing never matters when it’s the right person?
But Liam didn’t seem to notice the turmoil going through Zayn’s mind. He just reached over and took Zayn’s hand, running his fingers along the Zayn’s palm in way that made Zayn want to forget everything he’d just said, and probably the entire English language while he was at it…
“I’m not really in a space for being with anyone, either.” Liam said. “My brothers—some of them won’t talk to me. And—I like you, Zayn. I like Louis and Harry, these people—it’s nice not to hide, you know? Not to feel like I’m putting on a show all the time.”
“So—”
“So maybe we could just be friends?” Liam asked hesitantly. “Not to sound like a frat president at the end of the hookup, except I am one.”
Zayn laughed at that. “I like the sound of that. But no more make out sessions at the coffee shop.”
“Well, not unless I knock something over again,” Liam said slyly.
Zayn leaned his head against Liam’s shoulder and sighed.
Then they talked.
Zayn talked about the way Martha had reacted when she’d seen his late clock out. How Louis had applauded him for ‘hooking up on the clock.’
And Liam spoke, in a way that made Zayn think he hadn’t talked like this in a long time. He told Zayn that the only calls he’d been answering were from his parents, Niall and Andy, and this girl Kayla, who was surprisingly cool about the whole thing. About Love Island and Gotham. About trying so hard to fit in, you thought you would just become what you wanted to be. You thought you could fake it until you made it.
Zayn tried not to focus on the way Liam’s shoulders shook when he laughed. The way that his whole face crinkled up when he smiled. The warmth of his hand in Liam’s. The scent of tequila and deodorant that clung to Liam’s skin. The warmth of Liam’s breath on the back of his neck, and the moonlight.
He tried not to think about the way he’d held Liam close as Cinderella, the edge of his mask tickling Zayn’s face. Tried to let the truth stop sticking in his throat, and swallow it down.
To let all that was said, all that was there now, be the only things between him and Liam that existed.
But he knew, like the night that was gradually lightening to dawn, that none of it was going to last.