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Never mind about the shape I'm in, I'll keep you safe tonight
The sun dips low on the horizon, a swollen red bleeding across the landscape. Night is coming again and the very thought exhausts him. Muties only crawl from their holes after dark, their skin unable to handle even the weakest sunlight. No matter that the sky these days is the color of a days old bruise from the pollution.
“Liam?” Zayn’s husky voice calls from behind him.
“Yeah?”
Liam turns to face him. Zayn’s beautiful, even gaunt as he is, even with the delicate bruising under his eyes from sleep deprivation. He’s always so fucking beautiful, it slices deep into Liam’s chest. Guilt and love swarm him in equal measures. If there is a single person who deserves better than the hollowed out shell the world has become, it’s Zayn Malik.
“I took care of the back door already. Can you help me with the windows?” Zayn asks softly.
Liam manages a smile. “Sure, babe. S’just the main one, yeah? And the kitchen?”
Zayn nods wearily. “Yeah. We left the rest of them up from yesterday.”
Zayn’s accent gets more pronounced the sleepier he is and right now he’s almost slurring with exhaustion. Maybe tonight they’ll get some sleep for once, so tired they’ll ignore the threat outside. Liam’s feeling worn paper thin.
He follows Zayn into the living room and helps him secure the large piece of sheet metal across the wide window. Liam doesn’t know what happened to the house’s former owners, doesn’t like to think about it much. They left security measures in place, though, so whatever happened must have happened after everything started crumbling.
Liam tries very hard not to think about the tiny room upstairs with the hand painted clouds on the wall and the tiny trucks and trains piled in the corner. Maybe they got out. Maybe they found someplace better, although Liam and Zayn have yet to find better despite traveling over half the country already.
“Stop obsessing,” Zayn chides gently once the final window is secure. “You go over and over in your head and there’s nothing you can do to change any of it. What happens will happen. And we’ll deal with it when it does.”
Liam drops his forehead to Zayn’s shoulder and lets Zayn run his fingers through Liam’s hair. “I know,” Liam mumbles against the skin-warm fabric. “I hate it.”
“You hate that you can’t plan,” Zayn interprets. “That’s okay. You’ve planned well enough to keep us alive this far.”
“Are we going to stay here? Indefinitely? Or should we move on?” These are the questions Liam has been consumed with.
Zayn drops a soft kiss on Liam’s temple. “Tonight we stay here. Tomorrow we decide what to do. We’re fairly well protected here and well stocked on food, but we can discuss moving on.”
“I just don’t know what the best decision is. I can’t tell.” Liam hates indecision. He prefers the security of a good plan and the innate knowledge of the next step.
“Come to bed with me,” Zayn suggests. “Sleep. We’ll sort it out tomorrow. Let your brain rest.”
Liam nods wearily and allows Zayn to take his hand and lead him upstairs to the master bedroom. They lock the door behind them, just in case, and move the dresser in front of it. It’s unlikely the muties will get past their barriers, but if they do and get as far as upstairs at least there will be warning.
Zayn gently pulls Liam’s shirt over his head. He drops warm kisses over Liam’s myriad scars: the dimpling of flesh on his shoulder from toxic rain, the knife wound on his side from the men he saved Zayn from, the pale slashes over his stomach from their first run-in with the muties, the bite mark on his hip from whatever that creature was just outside Rotherham.
Zayn is thorough, showing a soft devotion to every inch of Liam’s battered body. It isn’t sexual, they’re both too exhausted for that tonight, just an appreciation of Liam’s solidity. At first Liam had hid from Zayn, ashamed of how his body looked under his clothes. Zayn had carefully and gently broken down those walls, insisting that the scars merely showed Liam’s capability for survival, trophies of his dogged continued existence.
Liam drags Zayn up to kiss his full, chapped lips. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Zayn returns easily. “We’re going to make it. No matter what we end up doing. And we’ll do it together.”
“There’s no one I’d rather do it with,” Liam confesses, pulling Zayn against his chest.
Zayn drops one last kiss to the tip of Liam’s nose before curling against him. “Same. Get some sleep, baby. We both need it.”
Liam waits until Zayn’s breath evens out and he goes slack and heavy with sleep. The depth of love for this man overwhelms him, heady and all-consuming. Liam would tear the entire world apart further if it meant keeping Zayn safe.
Outside the knocking and shuffling begins. The muties are out under a moonless sky. He can imagine their pale, loose skin like melted candle wax and stifles a shudder. They’re circling the house looking for a way in, but it’s locked up tight. He has to remember that.
Liam forces himself to tune out the sounds, focusing instead on the gentle rise and fall of Zayn’s chest. His open-mouthed breath feathers warm over Liam’s skin like a benediction. Exhaustion pulls at the edges of Liam’s consciousness and he finally allows it to drag him under, nose buried in Zayn’s hair.