Your Creation • Zarry

11. Larry

Our first show went brilliantly. Performing in front of that many fans always gave me such an adrenaline rush that was difficult to come down from for hours after we left the stage. I held onto a deep sense of pride every time we finished a show and I just knew that this was something I would be doing for the rest of my life. I couldn't have imagined being anywhere else.

After the show the boys and I made our way back to the hotel to hang out and throw back a few drinks in Niall's room. We usually did this when we weren't on the bus and just picked someone's room to chill in while we laid around and chatted shit about the show.

"How many Larry signs were out there tonight you reckon? I saw about six straight away," Liam said with a chuckle while taking off his shoes.

Louis and I rolled our eyes at the same time. If I had it my way I would never hear the words 'Larry Stylinson' for the rest of my life. It was me and Louis' ship name that the fans created because they genuinely thought we were in some romantic relationship. I will admit that in the early days of the band Louis and I were pretty naive about the whole thing and had no idea what it would become. Louis was also a batshit crazy person sometimes and the attention had been fun for us. We even played up the ship for laughs but we never ever thought that the fans were going to take it so seriously to the point where they believed that his girlfriend was an employee, a beard that he was hiding behind because he and I were secretly in love and dating. It was so strange. Louis and I had started to become so hyper aware of how we interacted in public because of it and our dynamic wasn't the same anymore in front of people, which really sucked, because we were such good mates. But no matter what we said or did, it never mattered to the Larry fans. They would rather die than abandon their conspiracy theory.

The truth is I didn't care that people wanted to believe I was into guys. It didn't even bother me. It bothered Louis because he was straight and had a girlfriend, but the idea of me liking guys wasn't even a total lie, after all, but it wasn't guys in the plural sense of the word. It was just one in particular and the fans happened to have it all wrong.

"There weren't nearly enough Ziam signs. I was a bit disappointed," Zayn joked while glancing over at me with that cheeky smile of his.

I glared at him. The fans made ships for us all the time and Ziam was the ship name for Liam and Zayn, who sometimes acted cute on stage and everyone ate it up. This was one of those examples of me being jealous over someone else having a bit of Zayn's attention and now that we had this thing going on, I could sense that he was using it against me and being cheeky about it. Liam just laughed and took the liberty of pouring all of us drinks of Rum and coke.

"I actually think I saw more signs for Niall than I saw signs for anyone else," said Louis.

Niall beamed.

"And that's how it should be."

We all just sat around and bullshitted about the show for awhile. We talked about the fans, the performances, the stuff that stood out to us and we were also planning on getting ready to put out another record later that year so Julian, our writer, came in and talked about some of the ideas he had been drumming up. Eventually we went from joking around about bad song ideas to playing a ridiculous game of charades which resulted in me acting out a scene of giving birth and everyone was in stitches over it. The entire time I had been sitting opposite of Zayn on the couch and I kept noticing that he had been staring at me intently so many times, as if he had suddenly gotten x-ray vision and could see right through my clothes.

I wasn't quite sure how things were going to play out between us on the road because of how many people were constantly around us all the time. I wished that we could just turn invisible. But as we chilled he and I kept living with our usual dynamic as friends, which was normal, except it wasn't completely normal. I started realizing that every time Zayn and I talked or looked at each other there was now this heavy, unspoken chemistry between us and it was driving me mad with desire.

Zayn's phone had started ringing at one point late into the night and he sat up to answer it. I heard Perrie's voice; she was so loud, it carried.

"Love ya too, babe," he said.

I don't know why but I silently groaned to myself. Although he did warn me that he was still planning on dating Perrie, a cute phone conversation between Zayn and anyone that wasn't me was the last thing I wanted to hear. I really, really hated being of the jealous kind, and I really, really needed to get him alone again and soon.

After the night lingered on and we were all kind of smashed, we ended up retiring to our rooms. I took a shower and tried my best not to masturbate, even though it was so tempting, because I was hoping that Zayn and I would be able to meet up. So I laid naked in bed for awhile waiting for Zayn to text me, but my phone never went off. I sighed. I figured there was a good chance that he had fallen asleep instead, but I just couldn't take it anymore. I felt like he had become some kind of drug to me and I had a major addiction. I crept quietly out of bed and slipped on my sweatpants that were laying on the floor, deciding to lurk into the hallway and see if I could hear noise coming from his room, but when I opened the door to leave my hotel room, Zayn was already standing there.