#might as well have sent an arrow through my sternum

[inkskinned]

you make me wanna hop over into the passenger's seat and kiss you while soft music is playing. come lose your earring in my life so i can find little pieces of your glitter all around me. i wanna hold your hand while waiting for the light to change. i want to hear your favorite song playing on the store radio and say - ah. saw this and thought of you.

[gohyuck]

pairing: head knight!jeno x monarch!reader (reader has genitals attributed to those considered biologically female but no pronouns are actually used)

genre: fluff, mild angst (they discuss an oncoming battle they must prepare for), smut (it’s mostly smut)

word count: 6.5k

warnings & notes (nonsexual): mentions of war/battle, mentions of injuries retained from past skirmishes, jeno is as tall as you need him to be in order to rest your head against his chest without leaning down, it’s kind of cheesy tbh they are disgustingly head-over-heels in love with each other, also a peryton is a fantasy creature that’s essentially a stag + a bird, also i know y’all must be tired of royalty aus but i swear this is almost pwp (except there’s context so there’s plot) so give it a chance (if you’re legal) i guess

warnings & notes (sexual): oral (giving and receiving for both parties), fingering (reader receives), spit kink (lmao sorry), general messiness honestly, mild knife kink (no blood drawn, he just uses a dagger to tear apart clothing), gratuitous usage of the name ‘lionheart’, jeno has a big dick because i cannot stop myself from doing that to y’all for some reason, some choking

special thanks to @moonlit-jeno​ @domjaehyun​ @waithyuck​ for reading parts of it/all of it beforehand!

the soft hours of twilight have their holds on you, chilling you to your bones even as you pull the heavy fur cape tighter around your body. you should’ve pulled something over your thin nightgown, you suppose, something to act as a middle layer between silk and skin and peryton fur, but it’s too late for that. you’re already out on your private balcony, overlooking a kingdom you’d do anything to see the sun rise on day after day. 

far, far past the outskirts of your humble realm, barely visible to your own eye, an unsettlingly large camp of soldiers is finishing setting up camp for the night. you watch as tiny, tiny orange pinpricks - no doubt the fires they’d set to make food, to alert you of their presence - begin to get snuffed out. finally, they sleep.

if you were any worse of a person, of a ruler, you would send your army after them now, hours before the battle is set. perhaps, if you were any less selfish, you would do so regardless of keeping your status as a good and just monarch. if you were any less selfish, you would shake awake the love of your life and hand him his cape after shedding it from your shoulders. you would tell him to rouse his men and women, to arm them to their teeth, and to fight for what is right using means that are entirely wrong. 

as if privy to your thoughts, your head knight stirs in the too-large bed behind you. you turn just in time to see him sit up and twist his body left, right, left as he stretches to rid himself of sleep. it’s too late - or maybe too early - for either of you to be awake. maybe you should have stayed within his warm embrace rather than gotten out of bed to size up the army of the kingdom of crithage. 

even now, you can’t help but strategize, at least on a basic level. crithagians are unused to the cold of your beautiful - but often frigid - ekoria. they won’t expect your people to fall upon them from the icy cliffs that surround their camp, nor will they be able to see over the oncoming blizzard your royal sky-reader has predicted. she has not been incorrect in many, many years. ekorians have, over the years, grown accustomed to heavy snows, among other weather phenomenon, so your army’s visual acuity is not to be questioned. 

that, and your troops are in the hands of the best warrior ekoria has ever had.

jeno. your jeno. your lionheart. you rein your thoughts in just as he pulls open the balcony door, closing it behind him with a soft click as he steps over the threshold separating in from out and warm from cold. goosebumps rise across his bare flesh the moment his skin meets air, and you don’t hesitate to slide his cape off and thrust it towards him, knowing full well that his arms will provide more than enough heat for you. he fastens it with ease, seeming slightly amused at how you’d been using it as a blanket, and gently grabs ahold of your wrist before pulling you into his chest and wrapping an arm around your waist. with his other hand, he takes a corner of his cape and wraps it around you, leaving you enveloped in both his hot-to-touch skin and the comforting fur. 

“they’re out in the valley, aren’t they?” he finally murmurs, leaning to place his mouth against your ear. jeno’s voice is thick and sleep-ridden, still raspy in a way that settles around you, inside you, within you. you lean back slightly, raising a cold hand to rest against the tattoo of a lion that adorns his left pectoral, mane stretching up to his collarbone and encroaching on his bicep. the lion has a scar on its right cheek. you pull away more, eyes landing on the thin discolored line underneath your lover’s same eye. 

it had been a longsword, meant to slash across your throat. jeno, with the speed of a star falling from grace and enough adrenaline to fuel a hundred men, had leapt across you in order to take it across the face. for crown and for country, bard’s songs later regaled of him. for you, he’d whispered to you that same night as you’d stitched him up, using the threading tactics you’d learned from the castle medic as a child. for you. always for you.

“my love?” jeno prods, and you realize you haven’t given his rhetorical question any acknowledgement. you hum, meeting his eyes with your own, and watch as he allows one corner of his mouth to turn up. 

“they only just put out their fires.” you finally respond, moving to be against his chest again. you rest your head against the intricate ink against jeno’s skin, finally letting out a breath of what one might consider worry. the air that leaves your lungs manifests into wisps out in the cold world that surrounds you. your lionheart pulls you ever closer. 

“you need not stress.” he says simply, and an outsider to your relationship would see no cohesion between your statement and his. still, you know precisely what jeno means, why he’s said what he’s said. you turn, pressing your lips against the lion’s forehead. above you, your own lion brushes his lips against your temple. 

“i have an army, a kingdom, even, to worry about, and yet i only fear tomorrow for whatever outcome befalls one man.” you whisper, and even you are surprised to find tears catching in your throat. you do not cry easily, not when you know firsthand how cruel the world can be. 

you only reign because your parents no longer breathe. 

tomorrow’s battle could easily bleed into next year’s war, and while your kingdom is prepared for such a thing, your heart may not be. your people are not belligerent, and neither are you. crithage had been the one to throw the first stone, had sent word that if you refused to relinquish your throne and bow your head, they would aim the first arrow, draw the first blood. no tears had been shed then, not even when you’d paced around your bedchambers, reading and rereading the note signed with blood red ink until jeno had physically pulled it out of your tight grasp. you hadn’t cried, not even when he’d said that he was willing to die if it meant keeping crithage out of ekoria, out of the kingdom you’d both built from ground up after the war that had taken your parents, out of the home you’d created together. 

“wherever you take us, i will follow. wherever you need me, i will lead.” he’d murmured the words against the lobe of your ear, standing beside and slightly behind your throne as you’d written out your reply to crithage in a room full of your advisors. nobody else had moved a muscle then, not even as you closed the envelope with hot wax and the royal seal. 

you’d sent back a much, much shorter letter than their own in response. 

a time and date for battle. nothing more and nothing less.

that had been so many months ago, so far away that the concept of time dissipates when you attempt to organize it in your harried mind. with a hostile army on your doorstep, everything suddenly feels far more real than it has before. your people have been evacuated, your troops have been trained. your lionheart is unafraid to the world, standing tall and proud at your side as he always has.

a sigh that starts from deep in jeno’s chest brings you back to the present. tomorrow is it, you’re reminded. crithage has seiged almost every other state between themselves and your beloved ekoria. if they get to you, they’ll have your head, raised high on a stake they’ll erect outside of the gates they’ll install to the place you call home. if they get to you, it means they’ll have gotten through jeno.

you can’t live in a world without him. it’s a dangerous attachment for a ruler to have, you’re well aware. if other kingdoms find out that your weakness is a person, one that lives and breathes, you’re not likely to ever see your love again.

it’s little comfort that jeno can’t live in a world without you, either. 

“i worry about not being here, at the castle, to protect you,” he mumbles into your hair. “i know that you are perfectly capable, and that you’ll have your own faction of our knights with you, but i- it feels as if i’m about to open my chest and leave my naked heart unguarded, right there for any arrows to pierce.”

jeno’s confession is simple, beautiful in the way the most ornate of daggers are: that is, you feel as if he’s just dragged a sharp edge down the length of your sternum, taking you apart piece by piece. his words cage you in, force you deeper into your own head in a way you can’t afford, not right now. 

“eloquent,” you hum, unable to resist teasing him even as the moment does not call for it. it’s to save yourself from your heavily beating heart. “it isn’t too late to make you my poet laureate, you know. no need to wield a sword tomorrow then.”

“and who would be your head knight then, hm? the current laureate? you want renjun to lead the charge against the crithagians? to be your lionheart?” your lover draws back to ensure that you can see his eyes, glimmering with mirth. renjun is an able man, and one of your best friends, but he is not the warrior jeno is. 

nobody is the warrior that jeno is. 

“such a foolish thing to say,” you smile up at him, lips folding from joking to earnest within moments. the merriment fades a little from jeno’s eyes at recognizing the change in your expressions. “you’re my only lionheart. always have been and always will be, even when you’re too old and gray and slow to be my head knight.” 

“someone seems confident of that happening.” he says quietly, raising the hand at your waist to come up and rest over your own hand that lies against his chest. you swallow, your own spit feeling too heavy for you to stomach, your throat dry and scratchy. 

“who else can have confidence of a victory rather than a monarch?” you ask, a smile that isn’t quite sad - but isn’t quite self-assured either - resting on your lips. jeno raises your hand to his lips, pressing one, two, three chaste kisses to the back and then repeating the pattern against your palm. he does not let go.

the two of you stand there for a stolen moment. you lay your head back against his chest, listening to the thundering of his heartbeat below the ink and skin and muscle and bone. he is real, and he is here. 

he is real. he is here. 

“the monarch’s lionheart, of course,” he murmurs, finally dropping your hand to reach back and push open the balcony door. “we only have four more strokes of time until i must go, my love. is this truly how you want to spend it?”

it’s evident that jeno no longer wants to mull over the what-ifs, not when he prefers living in the present more than anyone you’ve ever known. unsurprising, you suppose, for someone whose livelihood involves strategizing away his own mortality. you allow him to pull you back into your bedroom, immediately more comfortable when the door closes behind you, keeping you in with the body heat of your lover and the warmth of the crackling fire on the hearth in the corner of your room. jeno sheds the cape, draping it over the nearest chair, before bringing you back to his chest by placing his large hands against your waist.

it takes feeling his fingers against your skin through the thin silk of your slip to remember that jeno has nothing on. he’s always preferred to sleep naked, unlike you. though you hardly have any undergarments on, you at least wear a sheer gown most nights. 

you’d ridden him passionately before bed, tiring both of you out in order to get any semblance of sleep. as your lionheart pulls you flush against him, though, it’s difficult to avoid the way his cock hardens against your hip once more. you want to quip about how jeno’s insatiable, but he trails a hand up, up over your body to swipe a thumb over one of your hardened nipples, and you can’t help the sigh that escapes through your prettily parted lips. 

“will you get on the bed for me, love?” jeno’s voice is smoother now that he’s more awake, though you can’t help but miss the low growl that had come with the earlier rasp. he may be asking you a question, but you know that it’s an order in disguise. wordlessly, you step back, back, back until the wood of your bedframe presses against the soft plushness of the back of your thighs. jeno has not moved, choosing to stay put and appraise you instead. his eyes are hooded now, and as his gaze trails from your neck - he’d marked it up earlier, the kiss-bitten bruises not yet having faded from your skin - down to the curve of your chest, over the expanse of your thighs, he can’t help but reach one hand down to his dick, swiping two fingers over its head to collect his precum on his skin. 

jeno says nothing else, makes no other move. it’s to give you an illusion of control, you suppose. not that you need one. 

“should i rid myself of this, lionheart?” you ask, the words coming out breathier than intended. the nightgown leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, and you’re sure he can even see the slick wetness that’s pooling against your inner thighs. jeno adores seeing your body more than anything, but the gown does not inhibit that. 

it’s no surprise, then, when he shakes his head no, instead finally moving to stand at the edge of the bed, slotting himself between your thighs as they naturally move apart to fit him in. his clean hand slides up under your gown, resting just above your cunt, as he raises his other hand to your face. 

“lie back, and open.” jeno states, no air of leniency about him anymore. you oblige, and your love leans over you, his dark gaze centered on your parted lips. 

he lays his two precum-coated fingertips against your tongue, pressing in and then down and revelling when you don’t gag but instead run your tongue over his fingers, cleaning them off for him. you haven’t gagged in a long time, your reflexes getting used to him in the way the rest of you is. when he withdraws his hand, your mouth stays open, and jeno can’t help himself as he leans over you and, after gathering it in his own mouth for a moment, allows his own spit to fall from his own tongue and onto yours. 

your eyes go wide at the action, and you know that he notices it even as he does not acknowledge it. even so, you don’t miss the smirk that crosses his face upon hearing your breath hitch. jeno has you in his palm.

satisfied, he stands, and you close your mouth and swallow a part of him with a part of you. jeno’s no longer looking at your face, but you can’t bring yourself to care, not when he’s ruching up your nightgown with growing hunger, not when he’s kneeling on the stone ground just to make himself eye-level with your pretty, pretty pussy. 

“i took you hardly any time ago,” he murmurs, breath hot against your skin as his mouth nears where you so desperately need him. “and yet here you are, laid open once more, all for me. only for me.”

“always you, jeno, please - ” you can’t get any more words out, the air being pulled out of you as he dives in and circles your clit with his tongue, bringing his two spit-soaked fingers up to press into you with almost no resistance. your reaction is instantaneous, walls clenching like a vice around his fingers as he lays a filthy kiss against your bundle of nerves, hips jumping up only to be kept down by jeno’s other hand, pressing down against the bottom of your stomach. 

“patience.” he pulls off of your clit just to growl the word out against the skin of your inner thigh, and the wet heat of his mouth directly against your flesh has you practically gasping out. when jeno sinks his teeth into your thigh as he’s often wont to do, you let out a full-bodied whine, the kind that starts in the back of your throat and rises up through the inner column of your neck, meant only for your lover’s ears. jeno laves his tongue over the marks he’s just created, as if to wash the pleasurable pain from your body. 

he does not reattach his mouth to your core, choosing instead to fall back and watch, eyes trained, as he scissors you open. with hardly any warning rather than his gaze jumping up to meet your own momentarily, jeno presses his thumb into your clit, using your slick wetness to eliminate any raw friction as he rubs slow circles against your nerve endings. he’s never failed to bring you to the edge with ease, and now is no different. you’d be embarrassed at how easily you fall apart just from his simple simultaneous motions, in and on you, but it’s jeno, and he knows your body maybe even better than he knows his own. 

keening, a loud, gasping wail, falls from your lips only for jeno to rise from his place in between your thighs and swallow your sounds with his open mouth, his clean hand coming up to cage you in against your sheets. the way you raise your arms to loop them around his neck is akin to the way a drowning man would grab on to a lifeline, and once he rises you pull him back into a longer, filthier kiss, where your teeth click against his and his tongue opens up your mouth the same way it feels like his touch opens up your body. 

you feel as if you’re being flayed, as if hellfire is the only thing comparable to the heat against your skin. jeno steps closer, just by the tiniest bit, and you feel his hand - the one shining with your arousal - brush past your hip before he uses it to wet his cock with one, two, three firm strokes. copious amounts of precum arise from the tip before being pulled down against his flesh with expert downstrokes. your mouth waters as you watch.

“my mouth, lionheart, please?” you finally gain the courage to ask what is on your mind, sitting up on your elbows as you begin to slowly find your strength. your love raises an eyebrow, and not without reason: jeno is a big man, making even you - a literal monarch - feel small at times, and this does not end with his personality or his person: you have never been able to take all of him into your mouth. the ache borders on painful, frankly, and jeno himself refuses to harm you in that way. 

“this, now, is about you.” he responds, and your heart cracks as you register that as a ‘no’. still, you speak again. you need him in your mouth, suddenly. it isn’t just a want. something has to anchor you to the here and now, it may as well be the head of his cock, heavy against your tongue.

“what is about me is about you as well,” you respond, and before he can lay his refusal down out flat, you slide onto the floor - warmer than expected - and tuck your heels behind your bare ass. “i need this. please.”

you’re directly in front of him now, face parallel to his strong thighs. jeno strokes up, squeezes tighter just below his frenulum, and you watch, struck, as precum beads at the tip and then splits into two streams, half sliding down his hard dick and the other slowly-but-surely falling to the ground, hardly a quarter of a step from one of your knees.

“give me your hand, then,” your knight murmurs from above you, drawing your gaze from his leaking cock up past the dainty curve of his lip to his hard eyes. “now.”

when you raise your hand up, you only put it up limply, unsure of what he means to do with the limb he’s asked for. your eyes must be swimming with questions, because jeno gives you a hint of a sweet, reassuring smile before allowing his expression to become stoic again… right before he grasps your given hand and straightens it out, gentler than expected from such a great warrior but harsher than he truly ever treats you. 

he’s passionate. this demonstrates it. 

before you can react, your body following your hand up off of your heels, though only slightly, as he yanks up your hand, jeno leans down and licks up your hand, from the bottom of your palm to the top, all while maintaining eye contact with you. he lets go, though you keep your hand raised, your gaze obviously dumbfounded. 

“a dry hand would rub me raw,” he explains, though the smirk that’s tugging at one corner of his mouth shows that he finds your wide-eyed expression at least mildly amusing. “we do not want that, do we?”

it’s amazing how easily he can get you under his thumb when you give out orders that hold his life in the balance on a day-to-day basis. maybe that’s why he finds taking charge in private so easy. maybe it’s his way of evening your dynamic out. even now, as he asks you an innocent question with no hidden meaning or reaction, you find yourself shaking your head along enthusiastically. no, of course you don’t want to rub him raw. of course you and him don’t want that. 

you raise the hand now deemed ‘not dry’ up as jeno watches, finally, finally wrapping your hand around it. your thumb and middle finger do not meet, no matter how tight you squeeze. your lover lets out a fulfilled groan at finally feeling a touch other than his own on his hard cock, and it’s a beautiful sound. you want more of it. you want more of him. 

as if mesmerized, you lean closer, darting out your tongue to lick experimentally at his slit. he holds his breath, a large hand coming to rest lightly against the back of your head and base of your skull, waiting. you take this as a sign to stretch your lips wider, engulfing the entire tip of his cock in your hot mouth. his grip tightens in your hair, and, in return, you clench around nothing. 

as you struggle to take more of jeno in your mouth, you do your best to stroke the rest of his cock with a tight enough grip to make him feel everything, but not tight to the point where you’re hurting him. regardless of how little you can take on your tongue - not your fault, by any means - jeno seems happy, barely able to stop himself from bucking up into the back of your throat. at this point, you’re essentially just warming his cock, so you pull off with a slick pop to look at him with slightly watery eyes. a string of precum and saliva connects your bottom lip and his tip, and when it breaks, you’re acutely aware of the mixture dripping down your chin and onto your nightgown. it’s no matter.

jeno’s thumb runs over your scalp, just above the bottom of your skull. you close your eyes momentarily to take in a deep breath. 

“you can force yourself down my throat, you know,” your voice is raspy when you speak, eyes fluttering open almost drearily. “i’m not too delicate for it.”

there’s something simultaneously raw and pure about the way you speak, and jeno recognizes that your headspace has changed, just a little. your need truly is all-encompassing now. he must tread more delicately than usual.

there’s so much love, so much adoration in your wide-eyed gaze. he only wishes to return it with the same intensity and double the care. 

“i know, love,” jeno responds, finally moving his hand in order to place two fingers under your chin. he tilts your face up, taking note of the way your eyes run over his tattoo before looking at his chin, then his jaw, then his nose, then his forehead, until, finally, you land on his eyes. you’re a tad bit unfocused, full of need, but that’s okay. you’ll always come back to him. he continues speaking. “you’re so strong. always so strong for me. that’s why you deserve to be rewarded, yes?”

“rewarded?” you’re confused, to say the least, though you do not dislike the direction jeno is suddenly moving towards. he only smiles, gentle and kind and good and yours. all yours. 

“on the bed, (name).” he tilts his own head, jutting his chin towards the bed you’d slid off of earlier. you don’t hesitate to follow, pushing yourself up onto your feet and all but scrambling backwards to be seated against the soft mattress. the blankets are all haphazard and the pillows aren’t straight, but that’s the least of your worries right now. jeno gives no other orders, only stepping closer and, without warning, winding his arms underneath your thighs and propelling you backwards, causing you to land, back flat, in the center of your bed. 

it had always felt inescapably large when you’d slept in it alone. now, it feels welcoming. safe. 

“you’re ready for me, yes?” the tone of voice jeno uses is soft, even as his rough palms push apart your thighs. you nod, murmuring a small ‘yes’ once you realize he’s waiting for you to verbalize your thoughts. this is all jeno needs to climb onto the bed and move in between your spread legs, settling back on his calves as his hands smooth over your hip bones and waist. it’s evident that he’s bent on taking his time with you tonight, likely under the illusion that that is what you want. 

it is not what you want. it is most definitely not what you need. 

“i need you within me, lionheart,” one of your hands clutches at the sheets beneath you while you stretch the other towards your lover, imploring. “soon. now. please.”  

“absolutely impatient,” jeno only chuckles in return, drawing an indignant whine forth from the base of your throat. he looks over your barely covered body once more before finally - almost in slowed motions as if to tease you further - rising up onto his knees. his hands stop moving against your skin, finally circling around the soft meat of your upper thighs. swiftly and fluidly, jeno pulls your body towards his, wrapping your legs around his own waist. his wet cock lies heavy against your pelvis, leaving slick precum against the apex of your thighs and the bottom of your stomach. he smirks. “is this what you wanted?” 

the motion of being pulled into your knight had forced the air from your lungs in a surprised yelp, and the feeling of his warm skin - he’s always supplied so much heat, it baffles you to no end - against your own momentarily blanks your mind. jeno repeats his question twice, cocky grin growing with each utterance, before you nod vigorously and sputter out something vaguely affirmative. yes. yes, this is exactly what you wanted, exactly what you want. 

you’ve been growing steadily wetter the longer your foreplay had drawn out, but jeno, ever-caring, still pulls back - his cock sliding against your thigh has you moaning - to slip two thick fingers into you, adding a third when he’s absolutely sure that you can take it. in no time at all, you’re grinding your clit against his rough palm, the friction absolutely heavenly. jeno makes no move to stop you, only gently forcing his fingers in deeper. 

a fourth finger is added just as your abused clit can’t take anymore, and you spasm on his hand as you fall past the point of no return. your second orgasm of the night washes over you, and you can’t help the muted but harried gasps you let out as your hips buck up, driving your head back into the mattress. jeno draws his fingers out slowly, licking your essence off of them with practiced ease. once your body has calmed down, you can only let out a small whimper, still basking in the intensity you’ve just experienced. 

jeno knows your limit, and knows damn well that you haven’t reached it yet. it’s because of this that, even as your walls are still clenching around nothing due to aftershocks that wrack your body, he places the fat head of his cock against your hole and slowly but surely slides in. the hands on your thighs move up to wrap around the sides of your waist, and his grip is bruising as he pushes deeper and deeper. even as he goes at a snail’s pace, you feel as if you’re being pulled apart only to be pieced back together again. you hold your breath.

jeno is halfway in when he realizes you still aren’t quite wet enough. he shifts slightly, carefully moving one of your legs up just a little bit higher, before swiping over your raw clit with a thumb he’s wetted with his own tongue. a moan flies forth from your mouth immediately, and a gush of wetness coats jeno’s cock anew as he circles over your bud with abandon. he’s finally free to surge forward and bury himself within your warm walls without fear of repercussions on your own body… so he does. the breath you’d been holding in is punched out of you, replaced with an honest-to-god wail. tears bud at the corners of your eyes at the stretch, falling as he pulls out almost entirely and slams into you again. 

jeno does everything in his life in order to live up to the name you’ve given him: lionheart. he is just and loyal and thoughtful as an advisor, and analytical and fearsome and ruthless as a warrior. sex is where both sides of him meet. it is where he is not just the kingdom’s bravest knight, or the crown’s right-hand man. it is where he is your lionheart, and yours alone, where your souls intertwine at the place your bodies meet. 

he notices how your hands come up to reach for him, leaning down so you can place one hand against his heart - against his tattoo - and throw the other one over his other shoulder. jeno’s nose is almost touching yours, though your bodies shift continuously as he keeps drawing back and driving his hips into yours with force.

he never ceases to make you feel full. 

your walls grip his cock tightly, amplifying every movement jeno indulges you in. the slide is slick and wet and perfect, but it is not easy. the head of his dick catches on your clenched walls every time he pulls out just to slam back in, forcing you to feel him with everything you have. it’s exactly what you want. 

he slows down his thrusting for a moment as he moves forward slightly, leaning closer still as he places one forearm against your head and raises his other hand to fondle your chest over your sheer clothing. somehow, this is no longer enough for you. jeno’s cock is fully sheathed within you as he swipes a thumb over one of your nipples, and the feeling of his skin pushing the cloth against one of your most sensitive areas has you shuddering in a way that causes you to squeeze even tighter around him. his hips stutter slightly, driving him impossibly deeper into you.

“jeno,” you rasp out, tongue heavy and dry. “my pillow. beneath my pillow.”

his eyes go wide as he processes what you’ve just said, his shallow thrusts slowing down. jeno gulps audibly. 

“your- love, your dagger?”

“need you to touch me.” you respond, holding his gaze and watching it clear up from confused to comprehending you entirely. he pushes himself up from his forearm to his hand, sliding out of you in the same movement. you whine sadly at the loss of contact, but jeno mutters a good-natured ‘be quiet’ almost immediately. 

“you know,” he starts, voice teasing, even as he pulls your dagger - black steel, quillions and hilt encrusted with blue jewels, black tempered glass at the pommel - out from beneath your pillow using the hand that had been fondling you earlier. he moves back down to his prior position, and your breath hitches as he presses the apex of the knife against the collar of your nightgown. “i’m already touching you.”

“more,” you moan out, the end of your word coming out almost breathlessly. one of your hands slides against his tattoo once more, as if feeling the lion will make it roar to life. “touch me more.” 

jeno chuckles, albeit darker than he had been earlier, and digs the dagger into the cloth in front of it without any further ado. you hold your breath willfully this time, not wanting to actually nick yourself on the blade, as he moves down your body, cutting the sheer gown open down its direct center. your lionheart dots his lips against your flesh in a trail in his wake, scraping his teeth against your skin as he sees fit. 

he leaves a quick, but filthy, kiss against your clit for good measure, eyes lighting up as you attempt to close your legs around his head on impulse, only to have them pushed apart even farther than before by his strong hands. once he gets to the hem of the slip, he throws your dagger somewhere on the stone floor - neither of you pay any heed to where it clatters - and rips it apart with his bare hands, hardly able to bear not feeling you around him for much longer. 

before you can do anything or say anything or even think anything at all, your lover surges forward and presses himself back into you with a grunt that sounds almost like a growl. his hands knead at your thighs as he finds his rhythm with ease, pounding into you with practice as if you’re an art medium and he’s a skilled master. he’s everywhere, all around you and inside of you and in the air and in your skin, and it’s all you’ve ever wanted.

“touching - ha - touching you enough now?” he asks, resolve crumbling bit by bit as he fights to keep himself from tumbling over the cliff’s edge before you do. you can’t dignify him with a response, unable to do anything but claw at his back and pin yourself further against his chest as if it’ll make even more room for you in his heart than there already is. he doesn’t need a response, anyways. jeno already knows. 

he knows just how close you are, too. just as close as he is. it’s because of this that jeno moves a hand up to curl around your throat just as he circles your clit with two fingers of the other hand, continuing to fuck into you at the same rate as best he can. with a sharp cry and the arching of your back off the bed, you clench around him for one final time before he comes to a halt, barely holding himself up over you as he releases within you with a shuddering, gasping groan. 

moments pass, stretching into longer than they typically are. jeno takes care as he slides out of you, climbing onto the bed and flopping down next to you right after. the feeling of his release, sticky and wet against your inner thighs, is unpleasant at best, but you can’t bring yourself to clean up just yet. instead, you turn your head to your side, your nose immediately brushing against jeno’s sternum as you realize that he’s turned his entire body towards your own. he lets out an airy laugh at the sensation, pushing half of the sliced cloth off of your body in order to run a wide open palm down your naked side. 

“good?” he speaks first, asking an arbitrary question. ‘good enough to make you forget?’ is what he means, knowing full well that you could never lose thought of what awaits the two of you. the sentiment is what’s important, though, and you let out an agreeable hum as a reply. the sex itself was great, of course. he’s well aware. 

“sleep, lionheart,” you say just as silence attempts to cloak the two of you. “we must be ready soon, as it is.”

jeno gives you no response, and you do not require one from him. instead, he pulls you even closer into his chest as if doing so will protect you from the crithagians across your kingdom. his entire world rests between his arms. you are both tired enough that sleep forces your eyelids closed swifter than expected, and as you fall asleep to your lover’s slowed breathing and muted heartbeat, you can’t help but, just this once, allow your worries to slip off your body as your torn nightgown does. 

just before the rise of the sun, jeno will have to get out of bed and clean you up as best he can before donning his clothing, his armor, and his cape. you’ll put his helmet upon his head, pull his visor down over his face after sharing a kiss that could be your last. it is always like this. jeno will rouse the army, you will dress and arm yourself, and meet with your own private troops. 

as the sun begins to take its place in the morning sky, luckily opposite your gaze, jeno will lead his people into battle, riding his steed far, far from you. you will watch him go, but he will not look back. doing so is unfortunate luck at best. you’ve ingrained this into his mind. 

you do not know whether he will be back or not.

you desperately need him to come back.

all of that will happen in due time, but now, you drift to dreamland, safe in the arms of the man you’ve sworn to be with until the end. he tightens his hold around you, and that is how you spend the night before battle, in total comfort and full of love. no matter what tomorrow brings, at least you have this now. at least you will always have this moment. 

the lionheart and his liege. your lionheart and his love. 

for now, you are at peace in the calm before the storm.

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

HASO, “A little Race.”

So this is a little story setting up for some stuff in the future.

A few of you on the discord server mentioned an interest in learning more about the criminal element within my universe as well as a couple other ideas which I would love to incorporate, so I hope you like where this is going :)

Adam turned heads as he walked through the station. Glowing, grungy neon lights lit him up from either side though the forest of bodies parted before him like a sea. Everyone here looked more than a little unnerved at his presence, and hurriedly scampered away into the dark allies upon the station.

It wasn’t a big place, A trading hub  not so far from the metallic belt, so many of these people probably weren't here for illegal reasons, but based on his time getting to know the criminal underbelly of the universe, he also knew the station’s real reputation. And he knew the man he was looking for was likely to be here. 

He would have disguised himself as Kell, but thought better of it. He wanted to keep that disguise in his arsenal if he ever had to go undercover again, and this wasn’t a moment  he needed to be undercover.

Behind him Sunny walked at his shoulder, holding her pearlescent spear in one hand.

She really made an impression on people these days, and he found it more than useful to have a saint on his side.

He walked down the hallway through a set of doors and then into a wide cargo bay. Someone was playing rap music somewhere, and he could hear it echoing  off the rough metal. Graffiti tagged the walls on almost every surface, including the floor, and the rattle of metal on metal drowned out whatever lyrics there might have been. He stepped further into the room as out of place as he had ever been.

Adam had never been involved in criminal affairs. Beside his brief stint as Kell and his  accidental time in the Turma Prison, he had been a straight arrow all his life. He had never done drugs, never stolen anything, never been arrested. And it certainly didn’t help that he had to run here from an appointment with Admiral kelly, and so was still wearing his UNSC uniform, which was pristinely pressed, light grey  and caused him to stand out like a drop of white paint against a black background.

The music crew louder as he stepped inside.

The room was full of shuttles, or some of them were shuttles and others were more accurately jets. Some of them were old, held together by paint and duct tape, while others glowed sleek with outlandish new paint jobs that included skulls and flames and chains. A group of men and women sat off to one side. The women wore very little, just string bikini tops and cut off jean shorts. One of the women, with long dark hair tied back in a ponytail was wearing jeans and a spoked leather jacket.

A lot of the men wore baggy pants tank tops, with lines of tattoos crawling up their arms and necks.

Similar looking people loitered around the ships tinkering with the engines and polishing surfaces already too shiny to need polishing.

The  woman was the first to see him, sitting up straight with the rattle of leather and spikes, “You don’t have any business here, Get out.”

That caused the others to turn and look, and the group of people bristled like an angry dog, forming into a tight group shoulders wide, arms out chests puffed up.

Adam stopped a few feet away.

“I want to speak with the man called Donovan Red.”

“Ol Donni ain’t here.” One of the men said, spitting onto the floor, “New git!”

“I know he’s here. His ship is parked in the hanger on deck E.”

A couple more men had wandered up to join, and he spotted the tell tale sign of weapons shoved hastily into their pants.

He held his hands out to the sides, “Listen, I just want to talk.”

“Then come  back with a warrant, pig.” ONe of them snapped. The guy was an ugly looking thug with a completely shaved head and bare chest. He had a pot belly from drinking, but he still had one of the girls hanging off his arm shying behind him from for protection.:

He sighed, “I’m not here to talk with him about any of his activities as legal or illegal as they may be. I’m not interested in what he does or who he does it with. I am here to ask him a favor.”

There was a shift about the room, and the woman from before stood up resting a hand on her hip, “The golden boy of the UNSC wants a favor from old Donni.” She barked a laugh and the men and women behind her laughed too.

“”In your dreams, boy.”

The group turned laughing and he felt his insides churn a bit with rage. He went to take a step forward but took a deep breath and stopped, “He will want to reconsider.” they ignored him, “If he does me a favor that means I owe him, Think about that, one of the most powerful men in the GA or the UNSC and I will owe him a favor.” he raised his voice, “Your boss would have to be pretty stupid to avoid an offer like that.”

There was a pause around the room, and then Adam felt something cold press up against his temple, “And you have to be pretty stupid to call him stupid.”

Adam turned his head just slightly feeling the barrel of the gun pressed below his ear.

As he moved the gun moved. Sunny hadn’t bothered to deal with the guy, and he knew why almost immediately.

WIth one lightning fast move he reached up and slapped the gun out of the man's sloppy grip. It clattered to the floor and went spinning away under one of the shuttles. Adam then stepped back and elbowed the man in the face. The man staggered back and Adam finished him off with a kick to the sternum that sent him flying back into  a barrel, which tipped over with an echoing thud and rolled slowly away.

He turned back to the others who were hastily reaching for their weapons, “The next person who points a gun at me is getting a spear through the throat.” Sunny stepped forward with a hungry look on her face.

The group paused, “You’re UNSC, you can’t do that.”

HE crossed his arms, “I won't be doing anything, but I can’t guarantee that my partner here won’t.” 

There was a pause in  the room as everyone nervously looked between each other.

“Why don’t we all just calm down.” The voice echoed in from the back, and the entire group turned to see a man walk up through the isel.

Donovan Red was shorter than Adam had expected, but still fit. He wore a tight black T shirt that bulged around his biceps, and when he walked he walked with the confidence of a man not used to being out of control.

The man walked right up to him, unperturbed by their height difference  slowly looking him up and then down. 

“You shouldn’t have come here, Cinderella.”

Adam raised an eyebrow, “Cinderella/”

The man shrugged, “Yeah, you got that vibe, all dressed up like a princess.” He nodded to Sunny, “And hanging out with woodland creatures.”

Sunny did not look amused, 

“Actually that would be snow white, or sleeping beauty, as I recall Cinderella only talked to mice.”

The man snorted, “My apologies for now knowing my princesses better, Cinder-ellla.”

Adam didn’t respond, didn’t back up. Instead he inched forward so he was towering over the man, “Look I’m not here to bother you or your men-”

“Too late for that don’t you think, princess.”

The men and women behind him laughed.

Adam sighed, “If you will let me finish. I assume that you got off your ass and came over here because you heard what I was saying to your cronies?”

Adam stood his ground as the entire group inched in. It was partly out of show, and partly because he knew sunny and him together could take this crowd easy.

Red looked up at him with his head tilted to one side, “Tell you what.”

He stepped back and turned to look at his men, “I’ll talk to you about your little favor, but-” He held up a finger, “Only if you prove yourself worthy of my time.”

Adam sighed. This was going to be good.

“And how, exactly do I do that.”

“Simple,” The man said with a smirk, “You just have to win a little race.”

***

Eris looked up at the pictures on the wall. There were a lot of them to choose from, and she spent some time wandering around the living room looking up at all the images. She knew these people, or at least it felt like she did.. Through Adam’s memories she knew Martha: intelligent and protective, Jim: strong and loyal, Maya: sweet and adventurous, Jeremy: friendly and changeable, Davide: perfect and charming, Thomas: a general hot mess, but someone who cared deeply about things.

She remembered all of them, but at the same time that felt like invading their privacy. 

They didn’t know her, so it wasn’t fair of her to claim to know them.

She sensed someone behind her and turned to find Martha looking up at the pictures with her. She pointed up at one and Eris followed, “that was last christmas together before Adam went to space.” She sighed and shook her head, “A lot has changed since then.”

Jim followed behind and held out a cup, “Can you eat human food? Sorry if you can’t I just assumed.”

She took the cup, “No its ok, myst of my  insides are human.” She had taken off her hoodie and now let it rest on the back of Martha’s rocking chair.

Jim went to stand next to his wife and looked Eris over with his head slightly tilted.

Eris hid behind her long dark hair, hair that reached past her butt. She wore it long, not only to hid behind, but because she thought it might help to cover the starborn ribbons which trailed from her back.

“You know what Martha, she looks a lot like Maya doesn’t she.”

Martha turned to look and Eris shuffled her feet, “You know what, I didn’t see it before but she does. She elbowed him, definitely has the Vir family nose.”

He grunted, “Be glad she got the nose and not the ears.”

Martha motioned her to take a seat, “Why don’t you sit down and tel lus what brings you all across the galaxy.”

Eris sat shyly on the edge of her seat nervously running her hands through her hair.

“Well….. um , nothing really it’s jus that. I had been taking care of the other hybrids and…. And well I kind of got burnt out and couldn’t do it anymore, so I…. wanted to start living for myself you know?”

The two humans nodded sagely

“But I didn’t know where to start. So I thought I would get to know my roots a bit better. I am half human….. Well DNA says a little bit more than half human, so I thought I might start with you.  Iwanted ;to see Adam, but he seems to be gone, and I can’t reach him.”

Martha nodded, “It has been harder and harder lately especially after.”

Eris’s eyes widened as she read the thoughts forming in the woman’s mind, “Someone is trying to kill him!”

The two paused, but then got back into stride without so much as a look between each other. Eris kicked herself. People always hated being around her when they knew she could read minds. 

Here she was driving people away again.

“Yes…. someone has attempted to kill him in the past. We aren’t sure if it will happen again, but we dor worry about him.”

Eris felt her insides go cold, she could feel it through the mental link to his parents, and she could feel it inside herself as well.

Adam Vir couldn’t die, not before she got to know him better, and certainly not if it was going to hurt his parents, who were some f the nicest people she had ever met.

She had to do something.

[moonsbasileia]

Root and Bone

Also posted on AO3

Dishonored - Original Characters

Synopsis: Two witches from the Brigmore Coven venture into the Flooded District to look for their missing companion. They have a less than warm welcome from the Whalers occupying the place- despite that, the situation takes a turn, unfolding an unexpected, but positive, outcome.

-

An exploration of the witches and whalers as individuals. Set in the six months between Jessamine's death and Corvo's escape. Written as practice.

The way them whale fish went for us

It seemed as though t'was planned

For each one had his target boat

They played us man for man

Just knowin' now they think so clear

My heart says let them be

I swear to God them fish can think

As good as you or me

“A Whaler’s Tale” – Ken Graydon

-

Night fell over the rooftops of the old Financial District, painting the sky in dark orange. With the addition of the smog, pouring out of the factory’s chimneys, the horizon mixed and coiled like a bubbling cauldron. It was impressive, Rowan thought, but suffocating.

She was leaning out of the balcony of one of the many abandoned apartments of the district. Shards of glass lay around her feet, clinking whenever she moved, and the walls had become rotten with humidity.

Despite it all, and the mess of papers, clothes and shattered glass around the room, it seemed like it had been a nice place once, though simple. It had a small single-bed room that had been stripped of everything except for the bedframe, a simple kitchen with a pantry, and a considerably sized living room, still furnished with a red couch, a centre table, and a cabinet resting near the window. Rowan speculated it had belonged to a single accountant, as she’d found a book of finances forgotten on the small wooden table.

“Our time is running out,” a scratchy voice behind her sighed. Rowan shot a look behind her shoulders and saw Beatrice walk out, her face pinched, and holding a bottle in her hand. Despite her young age, her features were hard with unease.

“Is that…?” Rowan pointed at the dark green bottle. It worked; Beatrice’s face softened for a second, and she cocked an eyebrow and cut in:

“Yes, sister, Serkonan wine,” she held the bottle up so Rowan could read the label. Rivera Fig Wine, 1750. “We should drink it after we find our lost sister.”

Rowan hummed in agreement, looking back out to the water below. The stench of stagnated water wafted up, forcing her to avert her face in the direction of the breeze. The balcony next door had been blocked by planks, but the rooftops were low enough that she could see a building with an open terrace entrance.

“I will look over there. She mustn’t have gone too far,” Rowan warned.

“We shouldn’t split up, sister,” Beatrice said. Her green eyes reflected the light of the whale oil lamp that flickered inside the apartment, like a cat. “Who knows what lurks in the shadows of this horrible place.”

Rowan squeezed her shoulder, with her lips curling into a grin. “Nothing as terrible as us,” she assured.

Beatrice smiled, nodding, although she brought up her hand to hold Rowan’s wrist.

“I will check the apartment in the back, then,” she said, “But we shouldn’t take too long.”

Rowan nodded. “If we don’t find anything in twenty minutes, we regroup here.”

“Agreed. Until then, sister.”

The last thing she saw was Bea’s lingering smile while, with a crack, she vanished in a curtain of shadows, leaving behind a small pile of ashes. Rowan looked towards the terrace to the right and felt her body do the same; the rush in her ears of dark energy around her, and weightlessness from plunging into an empty space. A muted crack- and then suddenly spilling out like fish out of a net, into the dusty ground of the terrace.

It was not the first time she’d done that, and wouldn’t be the last. Yet, there was little she loved more than the feeling of surrendering her body to the Void, if for a moment.

Rowan crouched, eyeing her surroundings before going towards the door. Its wood was putrid and soft, and peeling off the bottom. It was ajar. She pushed it open slowly, and it still groaned. Rowan kept still for a moment, listening for any signs of movement inside. Nothing came. She went in.

The corridor was dark, as the only source of light was coming from the moonlight through the door she’d kept open. At the turn towards the stairs, she kept her body close to the wall, leaning sideways to squint at the dark. She saw nothing, but inhaled deeply before unsticking herself from her place to keep going.

There were two doors in this corridor, both blocked by planks. She stopped briefly by them, reaching out with her perception to try to feel Alice’s presence, but to no avail.

Down the stairs, the next floor was equally empty. Rowan crept towards the end of the corridor, where it turned into the next stairwell. The stairs were blocked by debris carried by the water, which she could hear lapping against the other side. However, there was a door, unblocked, directly in front of the stairs. She reached out. Nothing.

Still, Rowan touched the knob, and with a gentle twist of her wrist, tested it. It clicked open. She held her breath, surprised by the noise. When nothing seemed to respond, she pushed it further, and went in.

This apartment opened directly to a narrow corridor that opened to a larger room. Light poured out from it. Rowan followed. There was a doorframe to her left, leading to a bathroom.

She walked further, and the next doorframe belonged to a former bedroom. She searched it briefly. All that was left was the bedframe, a shelf with a few leather-covered books, a safe –that was open and empty- and a cabinet, with a cup still atop it.

Rowan went straight to the bigger room, this time. The light came in from an open window, busted and crooked on the frame. She widened her eyes. Bloodstains clashed with the window’s faded white wash. Rowan touched the hilt of the sword strapped to her waist.

She followed the trail of blood with her eyes. Like the other apartments, this one was scattered with dust, papers and glass shards. However, there were footprints in the dust, although they formed a chaotic pattern, like an abstract painting of dirt and blood. Two roses had been trampled over in the fight, stained and pressed onto the dusty ground. One trail of footprints went out through the window. That was certain.

Rowan walked in slowly. The silence was overwhelming in comparison to the loud beating of her heart, which she felt in her ears. She braced. And she found Alice, lying crookedly near the wall, in a puddle of her own blood.

She knelt next to Alice, cupping her face with her hands and turning it gently. There was a deep tear in her neck, almost all the way through, but not quite. She gasped, and let go quickly. It made her head hang in a strange way, which sent shivers up Rowan’s back.

An arrow had lodged itself right through her sternum. Her eyes, which had become white when she received her magic, had now faded into her natural brown and glazed over. Her jaw was lax, already open. Rowan imagined she might have screamed.

“You gave them a fight,” she said, and barely recognized the cracked voice that came out. She breathed, and said, “You showed them who you are and sent them home bleeding to lick their wounds. You are one with the Void now, sister.”

She didn’t want to leave Alice there to be eaten by rats and flies. But she couldn’t carry her. Her body was stiff and Rowan could barely hold her up, let alone transport her back. So she gently laid her out in the middle of the room with her arms resting on her stomach, and went into the bedroom. She opened the cabinet, and grabbed a few sheets, despite the strong smell of dust and mildew. She covered Alice with the least yellowed one, and took the shards of decorated porcelain bowls and plates from the kitchen to surround her.

She whispered a prayer to the Void, fighting against the nausea that threatened to rise past her throat.

When she was done, Rowan followed the footprints into the window. There was a smudged dirt stain in the lower frame, and nothing else. Either the killer had dropped down into the water or used magic. The prospect made her grimace.

She looked up at the setting sun and startled. Beatrice. More than half an hour had passed, and she had forgotten completely to come back to their meetup point. She summoned the shadows to involve her once more.

With a crack, she was back in the rooftop of the apartment. She walked to the edge, where she could see the balcony downwards. She only needed to drop.

A second, muted snap sounded somewhere behind her.

She turned back. Her fingers twitched towards the hilt of her sword.

Under the full moon’s light, however, the rooftops were well lit, and after scanning them Rowan didn’t see anybody or anything.

“Rowan?”

She barely stifled the jump at the sudden voice. It was Bea, on the balcony, calling up to her. She’d heard it as well, Rowan was certain.

“I’m here,” she said, shooting the rooftops a last glare before bracing with her arm on the edge of the tiles and dropping down onto the balcony. “We need to leave.”

Beatrice nodded, catching onto her unease. “I agree, sister. But- Did you find anything?”

Rowan felt her stomach drop. Beatrice still held onto the wine bottle, and fiddled with the corkscrew’s lid. She held Beatrice’s arms gently, guided her into the apartment, and said, “I did. I’m sorry.”

Bea’s eyes welled up, glinting in the moonlight, but she compressed his lips, as if she was afraid that if she started talking she would break down. She nodded, but the tears escaped, running down her cheeks.

Rowan put her arms around her, pulling her into a hug. Bea rested her head in her shoulder. She let the other stay for a while, pretending she didn’t hear the sniffing and hiccups. When her breath stilled slightly, she pulled away gently.

“We have to go. Take that wine with you, so we drink it in her memory.”

Beatrice wiped her face and nodded. She turned to pick up the bottle in the centre table, where she had left it before they went scouting.

She heard a dry crack behind her.

Rowan spun, her hand already closing around the grip of her sword. A person was perched on the balcony’s rail. Their face was hidden by a mask. Two red-tinted glass panels and a filter cartridge canister over the mouth. They dropped down, and with a blur of movement, something shot out of their wrist. Rowan flinched, expecting it to hit her- a dart, or a crossbow arrow?

Instead, Beatrice let out a thin noise behind her. She looked at her, wide-eyed, swayed, and dropped down.

The person approached Rowan, unsheathing their sword.

Rowan channelled the Void’s energy to her chest, and as she thought of Alice’s broken body, of Beatrice, behind her, she released it all into her shriek. The whaler stumbled back, losing his footing. He quickly balanced himself again, but that was enough to allow Rowan to unsheathe her own blade and slash it at his throat.

He caught it with his own. The metal grinded against each other, until Rowan was pushed back roughly. She stumbled. He slashed at her, but she caught it haphazardly. The assassin didn’t hesitate, and slashed again. This time, it cut a line under her collarbone.

Rowan growled, sneering at him. When he pulled the sword back to pierce through her, the only thing it caught was the smoke and ashes she left behind.

She appeared behind them, with a crack. It alerted the whaler, and he twisted back with the sword ready- until she hurled a vase at their chest.

It shattered, pushing him backwards. This time he did fall over, and Rowan was over in a second, her sword swinging in an arc towards his torso.

The whaler raised his left arm, turning his forearm outward. It didn’t register to Rowan until her sword caught on something, producing a crush. She looked down. It was a gauntlet, a tiny crossbow, notched to the leather vambrace around their wrist.

She tried to back out, but the assassin moved quickly, holding onto the lapel of her coat and hooking his leg around hers. Rowan fell, with the whaler over her, pinning her down. But his sword had been lost somewhere; hers was still on her hand. She tried to slip to the side, gain room to swing the sword again, but the whaler noticed. He trapped her arm between his own torso and left arm.

She struggled against the hold, but there was no give. Panicked, Rowan hit her palm against the mask, shattering the red glass visor and forcing his head back. She felt the meat of her hand split, caught in the metal sockets of the mask, and the warm blood seeping out.

Suddenly, the whaler disappeared, leaving behind a brief image of themselves that shattered onto nothing. Rowan didn’t wait; she disappeared as well, and when the person reappeared near the centre table, picking up their sword, she was already up on the cabinet.

Rowan threw herself at him.

The whaler had heard her, and spun around to deflect her sword, but Rowan’s was angled differently. She felt it pierce through his shoulder, not passing through, but breaking the skin. A sudden, red-hot line of pain traced her ribs, but she used her magic to pull him further into the sword. He kept pushing, trying to get her to release her hold. For a moment, they were stuck in this stalemate.

He broke first, letting go of his sword to close his gloved hands around the tip of hers. Rowan sighed out a small laugh. She pinned him on the wall. Though the whaler were much larger than she was, the sword lodged in his shoulder impeded his from reacting too fast. He tried to move, to throw Rowan off him, but she twisted the sword ever so slightly. Blood gushed out, soaking into the dark uniform.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said, between her teeth. Her knuckles turned white as bone holding the sword’s grip.

“Be done with it, witch.” Despite the metallic rumble the mask gave it, his voice came with a strong accent. Instead of aggressive like she’d expected, the whaler sounded strangely composed. Rowan gritted her teeth.

“Tell me,” she said, “The witch with dark shaved hair, green-skinned. Did you kill her?”

He said nothing. Rowan plunged her knife further into his skin, and he groaned, squirming. “Did you?”

“No,” he said, and hung his head. He looked strangely ashamed when he said, “Not me.”

“Why are you whalers here?”

He hesitated, then said, “…Not for any of you.”

Rowan frowned at the cryptic answer. The man slowly brought his hand up to touch his chest and catch some of the blood that was running out, pooling in his glove.

“Why are you witches here?” he asked.

“I’m asking the questions,” she cut in. “How many of you are there?”

“Many.”

“Not all of you are looking around,” she said. “How many are in patrol?”

“Seven.” His voice was breathy now, tired.

“Where?” Her hand moved slightly, tired of holding up the sword. The man winced, sucking in air through his teeth. She heard the noise through the metallic filter.

“Near the rail tracks,” he said. That was south. They had entered through the buildings near the southwest, and if she kept close enough to the old Hound Pits quarter, maybe she would be able to avoid them entirely. It was her only shot.

She pulled her sword off, but kept it pointed at the same spot. The whaler staggered, propping himself up on the wall. He covered the wound with his hands.

“She’s not dead,” he said.

“What?”

“Your friend,” he indicated with a nod, “It was a sleep dart.”

Rowan didn’t turn to inspect Beatrice and see if he spoke the truth, but she mulled the idea over in her head. He was a whaler, an assassin by profession. He could be buying time. Yet he claimed to have spared a trespassing witch.

“Why would you let her live?” she said, looking at the inscrutable mask’s eyes. She had broken one of the visors, but the inside of the sockets were darkened. He said nothing, but his shoulders were tense.

After a while, he tilted his chin up, and said, “I don’t know.”

His eye showed through the broken visor. It was barely open between his swollen eyelids, red and slick with blood like a weeper’s tears. A piece of glass had lodged itself on the outer corner of his eye socket. He would probably lose that one, if he lived.

Rowan lifted her arm and quickly brought down the pommel of her sword to the side of his head with a crack. The whaler slumped to the floor.

She scrutinized him, still holding onto the sword. When he gave no signs of standing up or moving she sheathed it and ran towards Beatrice.

A small, syringe-like bolt was stuck on her neck. The whaler had called is a “sleep dart”. A quarter of a bright green liquid still sloshed in the syringe when Rowan picked it out carefully, and turned Beatrice over carefully. Alice’s opaque eyes. The wilting flowers on her collarbones. Rowan’s heartbeat echoed on her ribs, hammered on her throat, as she brushed her fingers against Bea’s neck and the budding saplings that grew there. She just started. She’d just started.

Beatrice’s eyes fluttered, and flew open. Rowan’s breath hitched, but as her sister looked over, searching for her, she quickly wiped the tears that had begun to overflow the corner of her eyes.

“Are you alright?” Rowan asked. She offered her hand for Beatrice to hold onto as she propped herself up.

“Yes… I think so,” she said, rubbing her hand on her temple, which had hit the ground as she fell. She looked at the body of the whaler across the room. “Good riddance.”

Rowan kept silent as she helped Beatrice to her feet. The girl stumbled slightly, but held onto her shoulder, taking a moment to regain her balance.

“We need to leave through the Hound Pit’s surroundings,” she explained, “Are you well enough to walk? Can you see properly?”

“Yes, Rowan”.

“Then, be a dear and look out to see if there’s anyone watching. Stay crouched, and don’t leave the balcony.”

Bea nodded, and went out onto the balcony with steady steps, although she still blinked slowly.

Rowan sighed. She dug into the small leather pouch strapped to her belt, pulling out a bit of moss. It was from the deep of the Wrenhaven, and was mixed with enchanted witch hazel oil, giving it a strong herbal smell.

Her heart still beat fast. Everything she’d learned told her it could still be a trick. That liquid might have been poison. Maybe the Whalers had used their magic to concoct a potion that would reveal their lair to them, and they would be made the foolish hares, walking back to their burrow and giving the hunters a better quarry.

She walked over to where the whaler laid, and pressed the moss into his wound, moving his hand to cover it. The blood had seeped out, blooming dark on the front of his uniform.

He had sounded tired, when he’d spoken. That was what convinced her he was being sincere. I don’t know, he’d said, but with a look that carried more than that. He didn’t sound tentative at all. Or maybe, she thought, it was relief that was filling in these logical holes, making up these cues for her.

When it was done, she sighed, frowning. She felt like a fool. The whaler was slumped with his head at an angle, seemingly done for, but his chest lifted and fell rhythmically. Rowan scoffed and turned back, ready to join Bea at the balcony.

“All clear?” she said, walking out with the same half-crouched posture as the other witch.

“All clear.”

“Let’s go home, Bea.”

The two vanished, and reappeared in the rooftops opposite to the apartment.

[missytearex]

To Read List - Ziam

This list is purely for myself to keep track of everything I still want to read. Its gonna change as I actually read though them and find more stuff to add.

Find fics I’ve already read here.

Ziam

Four Arrows (Led You to Me) by transteverogers

An au where people get tattoos of their soulmates and everyone works in a hotel

(AKA the one where I wanted an excuse to do handy man!Liam and soul mates)

Playing With Fire (Never Felt So Nice) by transteverogers

Liam's known he's special since he was 7.

(AKA the one where they all have superpowers and go to a boarding school, where Harry's incapable of talking about his feelings, Zayn's not the ass for once and Niall just wants people to stop thinking about sex)

Six Degrees Of Separation by ghostrider

Where Liam is the bad boy and Zayn his sweet, smart, nerdy boyfriend. They are happy until one day, Liam breaks up with him. Zayn, however has fallen too hard to be able to pick himself up. So his best, annoying and stupid, friend Harry, comes up with an annoying and stupid plan to get his best friend his ‘dumbass of a boyfriend’ back. And that plan involves a certain Louis Tomlinson who Harry hates (loves) with a passion.

Everything On You Intoxicates by zipplekink

Where Zayn maybe stalks that fit guy from his Intro to Lit class on Instagram

until you believe it by lizee

And Zayn’s not usually like this, Zayn never volunteers to do extra work, let alone work that requires him to think and commit, yet his stupid mouth doesn’t seem to get the hint. “I could tutor you,” he finds himself saying. “English was pretty much the only subject I got decent grades in, even won an award or two in writing. I reckon I could help y’ out if you were okay with that, of course.” Stupid, stupid, stupid.

or, where Zayn and Liam meet at a sixth form party and Zayn offers to tutor him. He doesn't expect himself to fall in love with the kid while he's at it.

The Money Maker by deniallisstrong

"This is who I gotta pretend to be in a relationship with?” Zayn whines, shaking his head when he sees the crinkly-eyed boy with the styled quiff, the hoodie, the sunglasses.

“You’re no looker yourself,” Liam snorts, squinting his eyes at Zayn as he pulls off his sunglasses. But he’s lying. Of course he’s lying. His cheekbones are sharp enough to cut wood, his eyes bright enough to start a fire. But Zayn doesn't have to know that.

Zayn is perplexed—already—by Liam. He’s sharper, quicker than he expected. With a sigh, Liam slides down his hood, tiredly sliding his fingers through his hair. “Alright, well, let’s get this… thing started. I want it over as soon as possible.”

Zayn wonders suddenly what Liam’s hair feels like, has a strong urge to reach forward and kiss him back into the wall, find his own fingers in the boy’s brown hair.

Zayn's lying, too. But Liam doesn't have to know that.

(Or a fake relationship AU where Zayn struggles to hide his fond for Liam, and maybe--just maybe--Liam has the same problem with Zayn) [Started from the Tumblr prompt: Fake relationship AU]

Ridiculous by scottmcniceass

They are every cliched high school story. The jock and the rebel. The popular boy and the outsider. They shouldn't fit, and they definitely shouldn't work, but they sort of do anyways.

Nobody Knows You Baby (The Way I Do) by transteverogers

Zayn and Liam accidentally get nominated for cutest couple at school and Louis makes a bet with them that they won't win.

(AKA the one where everyone was betting and nothing is accidental)

You Know I Got You by zipplekink

“You don’t think I look stupid?” Zayn murmurs, fingers spreading across Liam’s thigh to tug him closer. He keeps his hand there, resting against his inner knee, gently cupping it and smoothing a thumb across the rough material of his jeans.

Liam snorts, he can’t help it. His breath is catching in his lungs just looking at Zayn because he is so beautiful, and he can’t grasp the concept of how Zayn doesn’t get it.

[Alternatively, the one where Zayn and Liam will do anything to protect and take care of the other, but admitting their feelings well -]

You Never Give Up On Me by sunshinexbomb

Zayn doesn’t know if it’s funny or a little sad that they keep skirting around this thing they’ve gotten themselves into. Sometimes it hurts knowing that Liam never asks him to stay even though Zayn knows he wants him to. He wonders how long he can keep doing this, can keep waiting for Liam, and he doesn’t know if it scares him or not that he could possibly wait forever.

--

In which Zayn is an English teacher tempted to write awful poetry about the warm coffee color of Liam's eyes, Liam is a primary ed teacher and single parent who thinks he's too busy to be in a relationship, Niall and Harry are the sickeningly cute newlywed teachers in the school, and Louis is a drama teacher who is not-so-patiently waiting for the day of his own wedding.

Let's Be Alone Together by we_are_the_same

After getting his heart broken, Liam escapes his life in London by boarding a plane to Amsterdam. Along the way, he finds someone just as lost as him. Together they might just be able to find themselves.

“You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living breathing screaming invitation to believe better things.” - Jamie Tworkowski

Thanks for being that person for me, Li.

ZM.

Or, maybe in the end it doesn't matter so much where you end up, as long as you aren't alone.

You Know How I Feel by LSFOREVER

AU. It all starts because Liam decides to take some classes at his Aunt's art studio.

Let Lips Do What Hands Do by erstwhiled

You're not supposed to fall in love with students, it's unethical or something.

a game that I'm destined to lose by we_are_the_same

college!AU. Liam doesn't like Zayn, because Zayn keeps falling asleep in class yet manages to get straight A's all the time while Liam barely manages to scrape by, and if you ask Liam Zayn is just a complete dick who thinks there's nothing wrong with becoming Liam's colleague at the on-campus coffee place.

Permanent by scottmcniceass

At twenty-six, Liam has made a name for himself as one of the best football players of his generation. He's in the prime of his game when a car accident threatens to end his career permanently. Depressed and hating the world, Liam heads back to his home town to take some time off and find himself again. He doesn't expect to find life pretty much the way he'd left it eight years ago, and he definitely doesn't expect to find something that might make him want to stay permanently, but that's what he gets.

say it out loud by ieatravioli

Liam has a younger sister who is deaf and he meets Zayn; an alumni from his sister's school. Zayn has just found out that he's qualified to receive a Cochlear implant and decides to go through with the procedure.

The Difference Between Knowing and Knowing by luxover

“They say I’m in a band,” Liam tells his mom. He squeezes his eyes shut, his phone pressed tight against his ear. “I don’t even remember any of it.” In which Liam gets temporary amnesia and forgets things even more important than the fact that he's in a band.

Cold Gym Floor Honeymoons by jannika

A High School AU where they are all in competitive Marching Band and out to make their senior year their tenth championship running. Louis wants to lead but not grow up, Zayn hates everything except for all the good things that keep happening to him, Harry is good luck and maybe just a little naïve, Niall only ever has whiskey and is glad he gets a guitar solo, and Liam has only ever done this in theory but he can't wait to put it into practice. Also featuring Louis crawling into Zayn's window a lot, which is no one is jealous of at all. Honestly. And a High school Zayn can't wait to get out of, even though the five of them sort of run it.

the truth or something beautiful by blackwayfarers

"Oh," Liam says like he's been hit in the sternum, turning to Zayn with his eyes wide and running his hands back through his hair. "Oh my God, that's it. Your family, they must have thought – like, because you invited me back home for Christmas and, oh, God – they think we're boyfriends."

Snail Jellybeans by thesilverwitch

Liam has been in love with Zayn since the moment he first saw him in the Hogwarts Express. Five years later, and he still hasn't quite figured out how to tell him that.

Or, the one where Liam and Zayn are pathetically in love with each other (but take too damn long to let the other one know), Louis refuses to admit he has crush on Harry, and Niall just wants there to be a food marathon.

the spark is not within me by crookedcrown

This is not how Zayn thought his life would turn out. He was going to go to university. He was going to be a teacher.

But now he runs errands for a gangster named Paul in South London - picking up packages, collecting money. Then he's sent to pick up a boy who's just been released from prison and...

Well, this isn't the life Zayn had imagined, but it's the only one he's got.

Don't Go by scottmcniceass

Liam's out of the country most of the year because of his job, but he needs someone to take care of his dog. Zayn thinks he's hit the jackpot when he starts renting the room in Liam's apartment. He gets the whole place to himself most of the year, and all he has to do is walk and feed a dog.

He never expected to fall in love with Liam, but it happens anyways.

Hear My Beating Heart One Last Time by khaleesiq

“Is this… is it normal?” Liam asks. “To get more than one result? “Not at all,” she replies, and Liam’s heart pounds a little harder in fear. “They have a word for it, but it’s dangerous and you can’t tell anyone, not even your parents, what you are.” “What am I?” Liam asks, getting more nervous by the second. “It’s called Divergent,” she tells him in a hushed voice. (Or, a Divergent AU that doesn't follow the book series at all and Liam is Divergent and hiding and Zayn is Erudite and trying to save Divergents.)

until the stars are all alight (orphan_account)

Liam is a retired former astronaut with the World Space Agency in the year 2134. He was once the ace pilot and pride of Britain until tragedy pushed him out of the service. He's approached by astrophysicist Louis to join a crew that's being assembled to go rescue an astronaut left on the Mars Space Station. This is Zayn Malik. Liam is the only pilot available with the experience necessary to fly a mission to a damaged station.

Slowish burn.

your albatross, let it go by darlingjustdont

They’re all here for a reason, Liam’s not stupid. They all have reasons to be in a safe house in the middle of Budapest, and here’s proof. They might need to talk about it soon. Not now, though, when one of them looks to be shaking apart at the seams.

They've all been so hurt, and they're trying to piece themselves back together.

Clean by unfortunate17

Liam's been in love with Zayn almost as long as he can remember and living in a heavily policed, alien, post-apocalyptic world doesn't change this fact. Things would be simple, he thinks, if Zayn would just come to understand the feelings he has for Liam (they exist, Liam is positive of this) and then maybe they could be happy together. But, Zayn is fickle minded, and he likes to mess with Liam's head - though sometimes, Liam is convinced there's something innately off about him and his memory. There's a reason why Zayn is like this, Liam thinks, but unfortunately he just can't seem to remember why.

A story that features: a house that becomes a home, two people with the same face, and a love that stretches beyond death.

I Think I'm Going To Win This Time (orphan_account)

“But this is my job, Louis. This has been my dream since I was a kid whose dad came home with his first pair of skates. I’m scared to lose this.”

“Who said you’re losing this?”

“No one is out yet Louis… We don’t know.”

“I can't tell you what to do, Liam. But he’s the happiest I have ever seen you with anyone and he looked so happy with you.”

“What should I do?” Liam deflates.

“Liam, I can't decide for you. Hockey is everything for us. It was once our hobby, our dream, our goal, and now it’s our life. But in a few years from now when we’re old and rusty and retired and watching young lads take our place. Is it Zayn who you want by your side or not?”

Liam has decisions to make and sometimes they're more heart breaking than the outcome.

Inside the Pocket of Your Ripped Jeans by ellipsometry

Fuck Niall, honestly. Fuck him for telling Zayn about this – he of all people should know that despite his leather-jacket-and-cigarette façade, underneath it all Zayn is just a hopeless romantic. And when dealing with hopeless romantics you can’t go serving mysterious, hunky, salt-water-washed strangers up on a silver platter. You just can’t.

It's a simple concept, really: Take a photo, then leave a photo. But, like most simple things, Zayn manages to make it much more complicated. So by the time Zayn meets Liam for the first time, he's been carrying a picture of him around in his pocket for nearly five months.

Iron & Ivory by transteverogers

Liam knows he's a shitty shadowhunter but he doesn't need Zayn Malik- the son of the reasons his parents are dead- of all people teaching him to fight.

(AKA the one where they don't hate each other and then do and then they sort of don't and they really do and then they really don't and then one hates the other until they actually fucking talk for once)

Clockwork by unfortunate17

Genetic engineering in humans, though declared illegal worldwide, wasn’t always forbidden. In fact, Zayn is a living example - wings sprouting from his back and an infinite number of languages ready for use on his quick, tongue. His boyfriend, Liam, brings back all the painful parts of his life with a father who worked on the Human Engineering Project, possessing a sort of fascination with these “hybrids.” Zayn hasn’t told him and doesn’t plan on telling him. But as he learns, there’s no way to run from your past - or identity.

So let's say, I'll come another day by sophieisgod

Zayn meets Liam in 1999, swinging on the gate in his back yard. Liam meets Zayn in 2010, killing time in McDonald’s on the most important day of his life. They have adventures, conquer the world, and fall in love. A story about fate, timing, free will, wonky genetics, parallel universes, significant tattoos, emotional haircuts, sudden nudity, sex crying, and a Batman t-shirt from HMV.

Or, in which Zayn is the time traveller’s wife. No spoilers.

Never the Same Tide Twice by sunfair

Zayn is a successful pop star from the UK, transplanted to LA. He is the product of completely contrived and neatly packaged PR and marketing, including a fake name. Liam Payne is a professional surfer who lives alone in a bungalow on the beach, taking a break after a string of successful competitions. When their paths cross accidentally and it's clear that Liam doesn't recognize him in the slightest, Zayn drops his tired pretenses for the opportunity just to be himself for once.

Somehow I Still Carry On, Burdened By Fears by slashter

He doesn't realize how much pain he's in until the hot water hits his shoulders. He hisses at the sting but lets the water pound his aching muscles anyway, washing himself with Liam's body wash and shampoo, then toweling himself off until he's practically pink. His knees are already buckling as he makes his way over to the dresser, grabbing a pair of clean boxers, and he eases himself into bed, wrapping himself in the cold sheets. He doesn't cry, no, not at all.

[Or the one where Liam's been kidnapped but doesn't remember Zayn and Zayn struggles with loss and love and heartbreak all over again]

we press play don't press pause by snuffleslove

in which zayn's a dancer of one sort, liam's a dancer of another, and harry, niall and louis are all damn good musicians. or, in which zayn's determined to prove that he doesn't fit in anywhere, and along the way discovers that he's fit in all along.

Connected by lazy_daze

Liam works at Poundland and Zayn does the windows displays - it's no Selfridges, but it's a start. When they open a musical box that Zayn borrowed from Styles Antiques, something interesting happens...

to this breathing end by magneticwave

Liam should know better, when he opens his email and the most recent message is from Louis with the subject line: YOU NEEDTO WWATCHI THIS IMEDIATELY. // Or, Zayn does a Hysterical Literature session and blows Liam’s fucking mind.

I'm a frail evergreen, be a bauble hanging off of me by jannika

Liam has a brand-new job just in time for the holidays and just in time to be assigned one of his brand-new coworkers in the annual holiday exchange. One of his brand-new coworkers who happens to be that incredibly attractive guy who works in the art department.

Or ridiculous holiday fluff in which Louis, Liam and Zayn are coworkers. Liam is trying to get to know Zayn, Louis has a master plan, Zayn's making a bet with himself, Niall's making a different bet, and Harry is a biased judge.

fooled around and fell in love by tachycardia

“I have a proposal - a proposition,” Liam corrects quickly. “For you.”

Liam and Zayn pretend to be engaged.

Some Love Wait Till Its Time by wasp

It hadn’t occurred to Zayn that they would start loving other people, people that weren’t each other. That it would be devastating but they’d survive, they’d keep on going with their lives. It hurts a lot more than Zayn expected.

University!AU where heart-in-the-right place but always-trying-to-save-people Liam Payne meets slightly pretentious hipster Zayn and tries to mend his broken heart.

higher than the moon by tinyweirdloves

au. zayn is an art model and liam should not be staring this much.

But the sun comes up instead by blackwayfarers

Zayn Malik, charming and confident fraternity vice-president, meets shy but achingly endearing high schooler Liam Payne at a kegger and everything just goes straight to hell.

Burning Away From Inside by scottmcniceass

They're a little too dysfunctional to be considered superheroes, but they do their best.

The List by scottmcniceass

Louis constantly gets Liam into trouble. Zayn is always there to get him out of it.

How Blue Is Your Heart by estrella30

The reporter smiles gently. “No pressure, it’s just that you’re at a gallery opening, so I was curious. Do you have any favorites you’re hoping to see?”

“Oh, you know.” Liam laughs softly. “Not really. I’m just along to keep Harry company if you must know; he’s the art guy of the group.

or, a Zayn/Liam fic based on the tumblr post here:

Zayn is a famous artist and Liam is in a famous boyband and they meet at an art gallery opening

Tunnel Vision by scottmcniceass

In which Zayn is an award-winning popstar with a knack for getting himself in trouble, and Liam is the bodyguard he didn’t want to hire who has a few problems with staying professional.

Some Girls by Rave

“I did some research,” Liam says, busily pulling up Safari. His voice sounds masterfully, miraculously steady in his own ears. “I think probably the best thing to do is like, get to know yourself. Um. And your, like. New equipment."

Zayn wakes up a girl. Liam tries to be helpful.

Hollow Creatures Don't Feel the Earth Shake by wasp

Zayn didn't think he'd ever see Liam again, that much was a fact to him. He never wrote and he never called. Zayn wrote letters, he wrote loads of them but he never had the courage to send them because it felt like Liam left him, didn't want anything to do with him and without Liam there to tell him otherwise, it was so easy to believe.

And Wonderful Is True by jannika

An AU in which Louis owns a bar he should probably close on Wednesdays, Niall turns down job offers, Zayn doesn’t make art anymore, Liam’s scones come premade and frozen, Harry cooks in other people’s kitchens, and two of them are lying. Or the one where Liam, Zayn and Louis are too tangled in each other to move anymore until Harry shows up.

When we meet on a cloud by retts

'By the way, Liam, Zayn here is your biggest fan. He’s a total fanboy. Practically lives in your tag on Tumblr, he does.'

Zayn is going to kill Louis.

Can I Keep You by scottmcniceass

Liam is always trying to do what's best for himself and his daughter, but raising a kid on his own at twenty-two, on top of juggling school work and a full-time job, isn't easy. Zayn just wants a chance to show Liam that he's not going to walk out on them. And Liam's daughter, Emma? She just wants to keep Zayn.

i'll see you down the line by blurrychildren (roadsider)

AU where Zayn works in the snack shop of the local skating rink and Liam’s a hockey player (worse, an attractive one).

Tangled Up in You by marcel

It turns out Zayn’s flatmate is essentially a disney prince. Zayn wonders how this became his life.

There's Probably a German Word for This by matchsticks_p (matchsticks)

Harry uses Nick's radio dj powers for evil and also for love. Or, a story about Harry and Nick pretending to date while trying to get Zayn and Liam to date for real.

wished upon parallel lines by pendules

AU. In which they go to a performing arts school, Liam is a piano genius, and Zayn has a secret.

do firemen dream of exploding sheep by blathering_kat, fiarra

It's Zayn's first year as an English teacher, and when he hears that the drama department is doing Shakespeare - and one that they're reading this semester - he has to see. He just wasn't expecting the exploding sheep.

Maybe One Day They Will Mean Something by wasp

Seeing Liam pressed up against Louis, soft, satisfied smile lighting up his face, does pretty much make Zayn want to crawl into a hole and stay there for a while but this is much much worse. He prefers Liam fussing over Louis to see him biting his lips until they’ve about to burst.

This Is What We're Doing Now by Rave

“Cursed me,” Zayn said mournfully. “Mm’a victim.”

“Bollocks. I dared him to let me turn him into a person who lets himself have a little fun in public,” Louis said. “Temporarily! Temporarily. He’ll be back to his sulky old self in a couple of hours.”

“You put a curse,” Zayn said. “On me. You’re a bad friend. Can I touch your hair?” (Hogwarts AU Yule Ball snippet.)

you're the answer to the question I didn't know I was asking by estrella30

everyone thinks zayn and liam are shagging. that is, everyone except zayn and liam

the boys of summer by countthestars

Louis cracks open his can and holds it up in a toast. “To the best summer of our lives,” he declares.

“To graduating high school,” Harry adds.

“To beer!” Niall crows.

Liam looks around the fire at his three best friends in the entire world, the rest of summer stretching out in front of them as vast and endless as the ocean. There’s nowhere on earth he’d rather be.

“To friendship,” he says.

Four cans clink together in a toast and just for a moment, Liam feels like he’s invincible.

;

Liam is 17 the summer he falls in love.

Take My Hand (I Promise) by sunshinexbomb

And really, that’s what Liam is, Zayn’s anchor. Keeps him from floating off in his own thoughts and fears and angers. Whenever Zayn needs him, Liam’s there with a gentle touch, a soothing gesture that feels just right.

or four times liam holds zayn's hand to comfort him and one time zayn does the same for liam.

Listen As We Go by sunshinexbomb

“What would people think?”

“What would people think of what?” Louis asks.

Zayn opens his eyes to glance at Louis’ confused expression. “Of the CEO of Malik Developments going out with an eighteen year old kid?”

AKA in which Zayn is a young CEO, Liam is his college boyfriend, and it’s all a big secret even though they both wish it wasn’t.

You Will Always Burn As Bright by sunshinexbomb

There’s no way anybody could truly love the boy with the black wings.

Beam Me Up by StormDancer

One Direction fans really are from everywhere...

Here I Stand by StormDancer

Zayn lifts his chin, turns so that he’s facing Harry. He doesn’t look at Liam, because he can’t bear to look, and because he’s really not trying to be mean or pointed. Liam can do what he wants. But Zayn drew a line in the sand a long time ago, and it matters. “I’m not hiding, Haz. This is who I am. They can deal with it.”

Cry Into Your Shoulder by StormDancer

It's 3 AM, Liam's world is falling apart, and all he knows how to do is to let Zayn fix it for him.

Cards on the Table by StormDancer

Slowly, very slowly, Zayn nods. “After the job,” he agrees, and turns to leave. But then he pauses, with his hand on the doorknob, and Liam braces himself because he knows the signs of a Zayn Malik bit of wisdom coming. “But Liam—” he talks to the side, not looking back, “You keep on wanting me to show my hand. But you--you’ve barely got any money in the pot.”

In which Liam pines, Zayn broods, Louis is manic, Harry charms everyone, Niall makes the best sandwiches, and stealing the money is barely the point at all.

As He Moves by scottmcniceass

Zayn thought he wanted to know where Liam worked. Apparently he thought wrong.

Burning Away From Inside by scottmcniceass

They're a little too dysfunctional to be considered superheroes, but they do their best.

Connected by scottmcniceass

Fed up with Zayn and Liam skirting around how they feel about each other, the rest of the band devise a plan to get them to own up to their feelings.

(Or, Zayn and Liam are oblivious and annoying, the rest of the band can't handle it anymore, and handcuffs were probably not intended to be used this way.)

Lover Dearest by scottmcniceass

"First rule, babe," Zayn says, leaning down. His lips slide over Liam's jaw, barely there, just a soft pressure, fleeting and gone as soon as it came. "Never trust a vampire."

He's grinning as he climbs off Liam, heading for the door. Liam watches him go, thinking that he's wrong. The first rule should be to not fall in love with one.

The Way It Is by scottmcniceass

Liam makes a habit of drunkenly stumbling into Zayn's room, and Zayn makes a habit of lying to everyone about how he feels.

Only Place I Call Home by scottmcniceass

Liam works at a coffee shop; Zayn is a homeless street performer who plays just outside the shop. Sometimes Liam brings Zayn coffee and donuts and in exchange Zayn sings for him.

Every Little Secret by scottmcniceass

It’s always Liam, isn’t it? Since he met the damn guy, he’s crawled under Zayn’s skin like he was made to fit there and the only way to get him out would cause Zayn serious harm.

(Or the one where all the boys are in boarding school except Liam, Zayn sort of hates the world, and he wants nothing more than to save Liam from it.)

What We Become by scottmcniceass

“Nervous?”

“No.”

“It’s okay if you are,” Harry says seriously. “I mean, I know I would be. Like, if there was ever a date that was destined to go bad, it’s probably this one. Werewolf goes on date with the son of a werewolf hunter, who’s also training to be a werewolf hunter when he’s older, while another pack of werewolves are practically massacring the town, and no one has no idea how to stop them. It's not a question of what could go wrong. It's a question of what could possibly go right, and I'm willing to bet the answer to that is nothing."

I'll Be Strong For You by scottmcniceass

When Zayn breaks his leg attempting to skateboard over Harry's car, he ends up stuck in the hospital for two weeks. The only thing he doesn't hate about the hospital is the gorgeous volunteer, Liam, who is almost annoyingly sunny and happy. But Liam's got a secret a secret hidden behind his impossibly bright smile.

Good Thing At a Bad Time by scottmcniceass

Zayn prefers to be on his own. It's easier to survive when you don't have to worry about anyone else. Liam leads a large group of people that have taken residence in an abandoned prison. When Zayn wakes up in a prison cell, all he can think about is finding a way out. Liam makes him want to stay.

Chaotically by scottmcniceass

The way Zayn plays makes Liam feel a lot of things, but mostly it just makes Liam want him.

Floating On The Water by scottmcniceass

Liam just wants to get through his last summer working at Malik Resort before University without incident. Of course, life is never that easy, and he ends up getting roped into giving the bosses son, Zayn, swimming lessons. That wouldn't be so bad, if Zayn didn't happen to hate him so much.

Your Fingertips, So Touchable by scottmcniceass

When Liam gets upset, he tends to retreat into himself. Zayn helps him through it.

Such a Flirt by scottmcniceass

Five times Liam thinks Zayn is playing around, and one time that Zayn proves to him that he isn't.

keep this love (in a photograph) by carissima

"So Liam asked you to slide down his pole then?" Harry yells over the music.

Zayn nods for a second before he starts frowning. “Wait, no, not like that! He was being nice!”

"You’ve called Liam nice like, ten thousand billion times tonight," Harry points out. "You fancy him!"

"Do not," Zayn protests. His head feels heavy so he lets it drop onto Harry’s shoulder. "He’s just -"

"Nice?" Harry supplies unhelpfully.

Or the one where Liam's a fireman, Zayn's a photographer and yeah, there's a calendar shoot or two involved.

i will hold you closer by carissima

"Liam, put your arms around my neck," he grits out, relieved when Liam nuzzles closer, probably seeking warmth, and his arms wrap around Zayn's neck. allowing Zayn to breathe again. "God I need to go to the gym," he mutters as he turns and heads for the elevators.

Or a five times (plus one) story because Zayn actually picked Liam up onstage and I had a massive meltdown over it.

silence and sound by carissima

Frustrated and tongue-tied, Zayn does the only thing he can think of in that moment and he surges forward, pressing his lips against Liam's.

The last thing he expects Liam to do is kiss him back.

Or the one where Zayn's jealous of Louis and Liam's closeness after Liam splits up with his girlfriend and it takes them a year to figure it all out.

Tower by threeturn

As usual Zayn is unreachable: a fairy tale.

When it came time to leave, it was never the right day by jannika

"Did you want me to come rescue you from the handsome not-really-a-stranger during the blizzard with the car I don’t have?" Louis asks.

AU. Zayn can't get home from work because of the snow storm. Liam lives right around the corner and isn't about to just let Zayn freeze. Fluff.

Baby, I Want You by slashter

Zayn's bruised and marked up good, shaking and moaning with Liam's name on his lips, and Liam doesn't think he's ever loved anyone this much before.

But Zayn's not there in the morning, and even though he's under an unnecessarily thick duvet, Liam feels so, so cold.

[Or the one where Zayn won't admit his feelings unless he's drunk and Liam pines. A lot.]

You Reflect In This Heart Of Mine by slashter

Liam bites his lip. "I, uh...wasn't happy with myself, really. It took me a while to realize it, but eventually I couldn't deny I was..." He pauses, contemplating. "...different. And I didn't like it. So I kind of forced myself to be with Anne and told myself to love her. I rushed into marriage and all that but it wasn't until we had Harry that I realized that I hadn't changed. And Anne was angry, of course, and she gave me Harry, but I'm so glad she did, I honestly wouldn't be happy at all if it wasn't for him." "I get it." Zayn says, finally. "I wasn't happy for a lot of my life because I'm also--" He smirks, winking at Liam. "--different." Liam's breath catches and his heart beats a bit faster, but he just nods and tries to play it off. "But I'm perfectly fine with it now, really." Zayn adds, turning his face back to the sky and closing his eyes again. "Me too." Liam says, softly, and it might just be a trick of the light, but he swears he sees the corner of Zayn's mouth turn up into a smile.

[Or the one where Liam takes Harry to a boy scout camp for the weekend and meets Zayn and Louis]

Marvel by sunnysideup

Liam saves Zayn's dog. Zayn steals Liam's heart.

it's a love story by robpatFF

Liam has a fever and Zayn makes incredible soup. Or alternatively, that one schmoopy sick!fic

Armour of Faith by photo41

In 2014, Zayn Malik, an army medic, is still out in the Middle East- he's stationed as humanitarian relief along the Iraqi/Syrian border. Exploring, he innocently touches a carving in an ancient cave- and suddenly finds himself thrust into a much different war in the year of our Lord...1188.

Hurled back in time by forces he cannot understand, Zayn's destiny is soon inextricably intertwined with the Knights Templar and the Third Crusade. He is catapulted without warning into the intrigues of knights, Lords and Kings that may threaten his life ...and shatter his heart.

For here, not only will he need to find a way home, but he also may find the love of a past-life.

Ring Me Up, Cash Me Out by ThankYouMerlin

“For you, yeah?” Liam grinned, almost shy, as he backed away towards the front door of the store.

“For me, yeah,” Zayn turned the peanut butter cup between his fingers. “Thanks, Leeyum.”

Liam blushed as he pushed through the door and left.

“Well,” Louis said. “If you two are quite finished.”

or, the one where Zayn, Harry, Niall, and Louis work at a convenience store in the town where Liam lives.

alternately titled: all i wanna do is (gun shot, gun shot, cash register noise) and make you my honey

You're My Favorite Story by ziammehome

A zombie outbreak leaves Liam teamed up with Zayn, a stranger with a motorcycle who saves Liam's life. Their world has been turned upside down, and all they really have is each other.

you'll never treat yourself right, darling, but i want you to by wafflehood

He loves it, the singing and the touring and the fans and the boys, his boys, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, not being a fireman or an Olympic runner, and he’s so, so grateful for everything he’s been given, everything they’ve been given. But sometimes he reads hateful tweets, or comments not meant to be hurtful but end up feeling like a punch in the gut anyway, listens to people belittle everything they’ve achieved, and he doesn’t mean to let it get to him, but it does.

(or, in which Liam doesn't love himself, (or think he deserves to be loved by anyone else), and Zayn tries to show him why he should).

The Visible Beauty of a Voice That Sings by luxover

"You have the most beautiful voice I've ever seen," Liam says, whispering because it's a secret, because it's truer than anything he's ever said in his entire life.

Good Morning (orphan_account)

It’s the last weekend before the start of University. Oh, and Liam's birthday. Leave it up to Liam’s best mate Louis to drag them all off to London for “a weekend you’ll never forget.” Liam doesn’t think Louis’ plans ever included meeting Zayn Malik… the one person who makes Liam’s birthday anything but what he planned it to be

let's pretend it's love by wafflehood

Pretend!boyfriends fic in which Liam and Zayn get papped while hamming it up for Louis and Eleanor, and management decides the easiest way to deal with the resulting hysteria is to let it run its course.

You're a good sign by retts

‘Anyway, thank you so much for your help. You didn’t have to. You could have just walked on by like everyone else.’

Did that make Zayn sound bitter? Perhaps a tiny bit but the boy just laughed, a bright sound that made people look at them even more weirdly, still on their knees and talking like they weren’t blocking the way.

‘I couldn’t,’ said the boy honestly, pushing his fringe back, revealing ears that were pink at the tips.

‘Then you’re the nice one,’ said Zayn. If niceness had a face, Zayn was probably looking at it. He stuck out his hand suddenly, startling the other boy. ‘Er, I’m Zayn, by the way. Zayn Malik.’

The smile Zayn received sort of took his breath away.

‘Liam Payne. It’s very nice to meet you, Zayn.’

Or Liam and Zayn in four different seasons + one more because life is basically a circle.

My favourite book by retts

The thing he missed most was Zayn. All of him, from his cranky morning self to the wanton boy fucking down on Liam’s dick later that night (and sometimes in the afternoon as well). The one who could spout poetry like it was his native tongue and the one who could barely say anything when he was deeply upset. The one who wore fake glasses and felt at home in Liam’s clothes. The one who was mad for kids and shrieked at the sight of spiders. The one who cried in Ghana and the one who drew superheroes who looked like Liam. The one who didn’t eat pork and the one who quietly but fiercely loved Allah.

Zayn. Liam’s Zayn. The one who, not long ago, had whispered things in Urdu into Liam’s neck that felt like beautiful promises.

secrets I have held in my heart (are harder to hide than I thought) by swallowsmateforlife

Zayn and Liam are in love. Everyone knows except for them. Cue romantic rides up the chairlifts, snowy weather feelings, and a whole lot of cute.

Written for the Ziam Winter Fic Exchange. The prompt I chose was: "The boys go skiing and get snowed in. Do they have to cuddle for warmth? How does their relationship change after 3 days of only each other’s company? Hint: SEX."

Yours Faithfully by threeturn

Planet-hopping popstars Liam and Zayn are used to odd presents from their intergalactic fanbase, but when an alien admirer gives them Harry and Louis, the gift comes at a particularly awkward moment in their relationship. Also featuring a gang of rebel girls and a sentient spaceship called Niall.

i'll always have you by somerdaye

what if tattoos just randomly appeared on our skin at key points in our lives and we had to figure out what they meant for ourselves?

i do the same thing, i get lonely too by detectivemills

Aside from creaming his pants for a fictional character, though, Zayn's doing okay. Except for the fact that he has to start most of his days by locking his cat out of the bathroom and wanking for twenty minutes.

O Green World by Suchthingbutnever

At the verge of summer, with his Bachelor thesis waiting and stale coffee in his cup, Liam stumbles over a person, hunched-over and blood-shot and so, so bright.

be a place that i call home by lightseep

sometimes, home is a person. and sometimes, home is lots of people and sometimes home is two very, very little people.

This Love Left a Permanent Mark by harrietelizabeth

Liam’s memory of Zayn is a summer afternoon, scraping enough money together between them for ice creams and a pack of smokes, the window open in Liam’s room to entice a breeze inside. It’s midnight conversations and early morning kisses, still half asleep. It’s all the words Liam never knew how to say until he heard them from Zayn’s lips.

And Zayn’s memory of Liam is….well, that’s the problem. Liam has no idea.

Be cruel to me ('cause I'm a fool for you) by frenchkiss

“Baba, can I get the same job as Leeyum when I grow up?”

“If you want, flower,” Zayn snorts, ruffling her hair fondly. “Liam here can teach you.”

“Oh, no, I can’t have someone who could potentially love penguins more than me threatening my job,” Liam says in a fake-serious tone. “I mean, Raani here even has a t-shirt and I don’t think I can compete with that.”

“No, no, Leeyum, I won’t steal your job,” Raani shakes her head hurriedly. “I’m only five, I don’t think I can steal your job until I’m old.”

Or the one where Zayn is a stressed out single dad, Liam might just be what he needs, Louis and Niall are always happy to babysit and Harry's a loud snorer.

Written for the Ziam Winter Fic Exchange.

I Think I'm Falling by wasp

Zayn wasn’t supposed to die, he wasn’t supposed to fall - he had wings. He had the biggest, strongest, most beautiful wings out of all of them. Liam made a deal for Zayn's life. It was the easiest decision of his life.

only fools rush in by vanessamary

"That rockabilly sound wasn't as simple as I thought it was." - Carl Perkins, 1954.

It's 1956 and Autumn is descending on the town, when Liam, Louis, and Jade find themselves expanding their horizons, learning abut life, love, and everything in between, all to the tune of that rockabilly music their parents keep warning them about.

The Underdogs by blackwayfarers

Zayn Malik hates everything about winter. He hates the snow, he hates scraping the ice from his car, he hates freezing every time he steps outside, he hates wearing hats and heavy jackets. In fact, the only thing he doesn't hate about it are his hockey player buddies and his childhood best friend, Liam Payne, the teenage star hockey player and captain of their small town team.

An AU about boys learning how to deal with a terrible Canadian winter.

I Taste the Sparks on Your Tongue (orphan_account)

He decides, in these shadows of his house, with this new feeling raised over his skin, that this is his favorite place – right next to Liam.

Or Zayn might've fallen for Liam a long time ago, but Harry is the one he awakens him to the idea that Liam has fallen too.

Baby You Were Meant to Keep by amazonziti

It’s honestly not Zayn’s fault Liam gets himself stuck in the Underworld.

we were just kids in love by transgenicveins

'it's just Liam and Zayn and red dirt and the hot sun and a whole new uncharted world of music.'

take this sinking boat and point it home by snuffleslove

Liam's on his way to get groceries when he hears the music. It's low and beautiful, seeping through his skin and settling in his bones and Liam forgets about everything else, makes a sharp turn towards the source of it, nearly turning over his bike in his haste. He rounds two corners before he finds the boy, sitting on an overturned bucket with a guitar in his lap and a bike carelessly toppled by his feet.

Or, a Once the Musical AU but I write a happy ending instead because those are so much more enjoyable. For anyone who hasn't seen the musical (you should), this is basically angsty zayn/li kidfic.

storm in my blood by snuffleslove

Zayn's managed to peel himself away from the window and he curls up, hides his face between his knees. Harry tries to offer him some kind of comfort but Zayn shrugs him off. He's closed his eyes but his body remains rigid and Liam's lost, has no idea what to do. He stares back at the girls. From this distance he can barely make out the phrases, but the neatly printed blocked letters that form the words Miss your uncle Bin Laden? We dont! and No burkas for Perrie! burn bright in his mind anyway, and he needs no reminder.

All the Stars and Boulevards by snuffleslove

A university AU in which Louis, Zayn, Harry, Liam and Niall are students at Columbia and take the city by storm.

Like Peter Pan (Or Superman) (orphan_account)

Zayn has spent most of his life up until now in a cloud of smoke, hiding from his past, being different. When a firefighter named Liam rescues him from a fire, Zayn starts to realize maybe Liam's saved his life in another way... and he's not quite sure he's ready to be that guy he should've been all along. But maybe, just for Liam, he can?

a tornado flew around by snuffleslove

just another achy ziam canon fic featuring a piny zayn and a piny liam and all knowing bandmates, and i'm really bad at summaries, just read, ok?

the bittersweet between my teeth by gaysubtexts

liam and zayn grow up together, louis, niall, and harry tagging along later on. that's it.

If Losing This Game Still Won Me the Bronze by jannika

An AU spanning a decade, in which the world is huge and they’re all just trying to find ways to handle it. Harry and Louis fight, Niall plays guitar, Liam runs, Zayn draws, and there are stars stuck on ceilings and chocolate and books Liam doesn’t read.

Once For Everybody Who Got Left Behind by pukeandcry

Liam doesn’t know how to wrap his head around this, because the question shouldn’t be -- the question should be how is there a ghost in his room, not whether or not he’s done something to offend it. “Well, like. I might’ve told him that ghosts don’t exist?”

“Oh, no, he doesn’t like that,” Louis says.

(or, the AU where Zayn is a ghost, and Liam moves into his attic).

two sets to one by retts

Whatever. They play tennis, except for Niall who's Louis' physio. And there are cameos by actual tennis people. And Harry's still a minor, so. And Liam and Zayn are signed by Adidas. Together. Because they play Doubles, of course. They are all so gay, except for Niall again who really needs to get some.

Romance and conflict in Melbourne Park. Bring on the heat.

to a very crowded place by blurrychildren (roadsider)

Zayn is arrogant and a fencer (and kind of an asshole, actually), and Liam really shouldn't be as good as he is, dammit.

Like Flying (orphan_account)

The Olympics are really just an excuse for falling in love. Plus fencing and gymnastics.

Let's be young, let's pretend that we never will die. by jannika

in group sessions they all have to repeat over and over that it wasn't their fault. It was like they had an illness, really. Couldn't be helped. But now that they're better they can be reintegrated back into society.

Liam wonders if reintegration will stop the nightmares he can't seem to shake during the day.

In the Flesh style Zombie AU.

The course of true love never did run smooth by Rosesnfeathers

He lets them talk to look around the room while eating his roasted chicken and to his own despair, he meets Liam’s eyes across the room from where he sits with Niall and their friend Sophia. She talks to Liam but it looks like he is not listening, he is looking straight at Zayn and even in the distance, he can see the coldness in those brown eyes. Zayn lowers his eyes then and concentrates on his food, his chicken being a lot less judgmental than Liam fucking Payne and it hurts a lot less to concentrate on his food than to stare into those eyes. Welcome to seventh year Zayn, nothing really changed and he still hates you just as much.

Or the one where Zayn and Liam are in Hogwarts and kind of hate each other.

according to your heart (my place is not deliberate) (orphan_account)

The fading light brings the world into prospective – the team standing shoulder to shoulder, halfway buzzed on alcohol and cigarettes, grinning goofily at the sky. His boys nudged hip to hip with him and he couldn’t think of another place to be.

(or: a university-volleyball au in which Zayn hates the game but he does it for a scholarship. And for Louis. And possibly for the new freshman setter who keeps teaching Zayn new things.)

And You Know For Me, It's Always You by takemeorleaveme

To be completely fair, the whole town fell in love with Zayn and his son, Tahir, long before Liam ever did.

The Gilmore Girls AU I thought would be a good idea and it turns out, it was.

with every last breath, i feel you on my skin by englandziam

Autumn is his favourite time of year, the soft colours inspiring new sketches in his mind and marking out mental images of distinct paintings. He’s also reminded of his favourite memories – bringing Aashir home on a late Sunday morning and Soraya’s first words uttered in between giggles of Liam decorating them in a flurry of falling leaves. Liam shyly sliding a ring into his palm with a soft, hopeful smile clinging to his lips after he’d woken Zayn with tea and toast in bed, the sigh of relief he’d breathed when Zayn had mumbled an inevitable ‘yes’ over his lips. .

we are the quiet ones by englandziam

Zayn feels invincible, in the midst of this small town with a couple of best mates and literature students who seem to get him. He misses home but as every day approaches these people feel less like strangers and more like family.

(Or a University AU where Zayn is an English student and Liam is the football captain).

I See You Babe, But We Are Both Blind by SoftlyandSwiftly

Zayn's fairly certain the world actually hates him. He's got the shittiest luck, and fate seems to want to fuck with him. But maybe that's exactly what he needs.

One Direction returns to London for a break from their Take Me Home Tour in August 2013, and after an unfortunate run-in at a coffee shop, Liam and Zayn find themselves in a fake relationship. Except, it ends up not feeling fake at all.

(Basically, I wanted to write fakedating!ziam).

They Fall in Love Like This... by SoftlyandSwiftly

Liam Payne meets Zayn Malik the day he auditions for the X Factor, and it's absolutely mental that Zayn is what he remembers most about that day.

The Killing Type by protagonist_m

Liam breathes hotly through his nose, eyes twitching shut as he squeezes a bit more on Zayn’s neck. “Do you know how dangerous what you’re doing is?”

Zayn draws in his own ragged breath. “Do you?”

Zayn is a doctoral student who goes to great lengths to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Liam is heading the biggest serial murder investigation London has seen in half a century. And before this, he'd never been sent a love note via corpse.

simple truths of belonging by soofyahn

"He doesn’t think about Zayn, anymore. He doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t daydream and he doesn’t picture those dark eyes catching on his for only half a second, begging so many questions: what are you doing? Are you happy, now? How are you? No, really, how are you? Liam doesn’t think of him. He doesn’t."

Liam spends ten years building the career for himself that he’s always wanted, and spends the same span of time falling out of communication with the one person he can’t reason why he misses. They find each other, again, stumbling around each other for a moment until they fall together in new, unpredictable ways.

even as a dream by zadonis

Life was stable, and that's all that they could ask for, but both of them knew that the time would come with the University ran out of food, when there would be nothing else for them to feed to the fire other than themselves, and Zayn feared that day would come a lot sooner than either of them could hope for. The world has been frozen over for 15 years. Very few people are surviving through the struggle of hypothermia and hunger, but somehow Zayn is. He found a way, he found a love, and he'll stick with it to the end. (a ziam au where there's a lot of snow, a handful of cats and dogs, and a miracle or two in the middle of all of it)

give him the time, he'll know you meant it by Dreams

“What is it, Payne?” Zayn has his back to him, but it’s not like the puppy eyes were ever gonna work.

“I really, truly need your help in Potions. Please, Zayn.”

Zayn turns his head, still not looking at him. His profile looks breathtaking in the dim light of the fire. “You have one chance. Meet me at the Library tomorrow at four. We’ll see after that.” And then he’s off, rushing up the stairs.

(Or, the one in which Liam's failing Potions but then Zayn helps him and they fall in love.)

Together Making One by zenamored

Another thing he really likes about being with Zayn—he’ll never go hungry while he’s around.

Four times Zayn cooks for Liam and one time Liam returns the favor.

people fall in love in mysterious ways by vanessamary

He may be mad in inviting Zayn along tonight, prolonging something that was only supposed to last one night but he couldn’t stand the idea of never seeing Zayn again. He couldn’t get him out of his head, is the thing. Not the way he smiled - with his tongue between his teeth - or the way he brushed his fingers over Liam’s skin - as if he’d been there before and knew what spots to touch. It’s impossible to forget, even though Liam knows he just might have to. If he has to deal with Louis’ snarky comments and Harry’s pitying eyes, so be it.

or a Ziam Weekend AU

Every Step by zipplekink

Every step Liam takes, it's for her, Lily. And every path he's journeyed has somehow led him to Zayn.

I'll See You (in Gold and Blue) by iambluehead

Liam is a keeper for the Tutshill Tornadoes, a Hogwarts dropout, and, at seventeen, the youngest professional Quidditch player in England. Zayn is a seventh year Ravenclaw, most likely the next Newt Scamander, and maybe the only boy in the entire wizarding world who doesn’t keep up with Quidditch. It takes a dragon, three near death experiences, and most of the Daily Prophet’s gossip column journalists for them to figure it out but somehow, they get there in the end. Featuring Louis as Liam’s scheming teammate, Harry as a media intern who just wants an exclusive (and a boyfriend), and Niall as the world’s biggest Tutshill Tornado fan and Hogwarts’ biggest ladies’ man.

put no one else above us by tachycardia

Zayn moves into a house during his last year of university, and he finds people to learn and know and love.

and you take me the way i am (orphan_account)

It’s incredibly relaxing, even in this small space, the way they’ve always been. Such a distraction that he doesn’t think, not for once, about agreeing to lie to his family and Zayn pretending to be his date and how easy all of this might be.

(Liam needs a date to a wedding. His family loves to match him up with blind dates. He doesn't want that. He needs a date... and, well, why not Zayn. Pretending to be boyfriends for a weekend isn't the worst idea he supposes. Liam is horribly wrong.)

Literally, Not Figuratively by SoftlyandSwiftly

Louis locks Zayn and Liam in a closet to force them to confront their feelings. But he's missing a crucial detail.

(they say home) is where you go to rest your bones by darlingjustdont

There’s a warmth in his chest that expands until he feels buoyant almost. Like he could potentially fly. What a fucking cliche. “You okay?” Liam asks, sliding up behind him and pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck. “Never been better,” he replies. “Why do you ask?” “You’ve been staring into the cupboard for about three minutes, babe. I don’t think you’re going to find Narnia there, no matter how hard you look.” Zayn snorts and turns so Liam’s bracketed by his legs. “You’re a dork.” Liam shrugs. “You love it, though,” he answers easily and Zayn’s breath catches for a minute. “Yeah, I do.” Zayn's managing just fine as a single father. Louis and Harry are a help, as much as they are terrors, but it's Liam who brings him home.

we may fall (but we get up again) (orphan_account)

It's Liam's favorite moment - helping someone else create a memory. He's always the best man, the one holding everything together at a wedding. And, one day, he's going to fall madly in love and create that moment for himself. And he knows it in his blood - that moment won't include some cynical, smug bloke named Zayn Malik.

(alternately: a 27 Dresses AU where Liam is everyone's favorite best man and he just might be madly in love with his boss ... and maybe with an arrogant writer who hates weddings as much as Liam loves them, too)It's Liam's favorite moment - helping someone else create a memory. He's always the best man, the one holding everything together at a wedding. And, one day, he's going to fall madly in love and create that moment for himself. And he knows it in his blood - that moment won't include some cynical, smug bloke named Zayn Malik.(alternately: a 27 Dresses AU where Liam is everyone's favorite best man and he just might be madly in love with his boss ... and maybe with an arrogant writer who hates weddings as much as Liam loves them, too)

I was a king under your control by frenchkiss

Liam Payne, co-captain of The Rogue and notoriously fierce pirate of the Seven Seas, meets runaway Zayn Malik. This is their love story.

Die Young, Stay Pretty by teaandtumblr

Zayn is happy being a hairdresser who minds his own business; that is, until someone called "Liam" has to come in, dragging his friend on the back of a bet. And, really, Zayn didn't stand a chance.

Remember Me by burymeinziam

In which Zayn and Liam need to forget before they can remember.

kettle and mirror by yasgorl

The delivery truck made it halfway up the long, rutted road, quickly turning white in the evening snow flurry, before leaving its burden at the turn into Liam’s driveway.

Or, the one where Zayn is a robot.

Riding The Horizon by burymeinziam

Zayn has a choice. He’s on the edge, riding the horizon, blurring the line between life and death and he has a choice.

I Don't Know Who I Am (but i find myself in you) by unfortunate17

in which zayn is a controversial, international RnB star and liam never leaves his hospital room.

You've Got Me. by whatisthistho

He took a step closer to the edge of the pier, peering down over the railing before pushing himself up and over it, his hands holding onto the railing that was now behind him. He’d thought about this so many times. So many different ways to do it – but none appealed to him but this because well – Liam couldn’t swim.

Or - Liam is spiraling and Zayn wants to save him.

Viva la Vida by iambluehead

In which Liam is not a princess, but needs saving anyway; everyone is just a pawn in a dangerous game of politics and brutality he’s not sure anyone knows how to play; there’s more than one side to everything and maybe no right side to anything; and you can find and love and learn to live without people even after you’ve lost them. And instead of a princess that needs saving, there might be a boy who never needed anything, except maybe something worth dying for.

(Or, Liam is the crown prince of England who gets kidnapped by rebels and finds out that the world is a big, ugly place full of beautiful, broken-up people who may never get a happily ever after, no matter how hard they try.)

you can coax the cold right out of me by loveontherocks

“Give me a week.”

Zayn raises his eyebrows. “What?”

“Give me a week,” Liam repeats. “Seven days. Just come hang out with us and let me show you what we do. Please? If by the end you still hate us and everything we stand for, then I won't stand in the way of your petition. Just let me show you.”

“A week?” Zayn asks. “That's it?”

It's a good argument. Seven days and he can meander around hungover college kids and make a list of all the reasons Greek Row shouldn't continue.

Nodding, Liam reaches out his hand to touch Zayn's arm. Zayn doesn't brush Liam off.

“Alright, fine. One week, Liam. And I'm not easily amazed, so I hope you've got something interesting to show me.”

Laughing, Liam rescinds his hand from Zayn's forearm and shakes his head. “I think you underestimate us, honestly. But just you wait.”

or; zayn drafts a petition to shut down the frat houses, but liam convinces him not to.

i'm begging you to keep on (haunting me) by loveontherocks

If Zayn were anywhere but here, he’d think it’d be hilarious. For fuck’s sake, he’s arguing with a goddamn ghost.

And, if Zayn was in complete denial, which he sort of is, he’d think this was a fever dream from knocking back too much alcohol and too much caffeine.

He’s probably lying over the dining room table, in a coma or something, because fuck, he lives alone.

or; Zayn lives alone in a blue house until he doesn't.

you're writing lines about me, romantic poetry by loveontherocks

There’s a moment where there’s just the soft quiet, a calmness that blankets Liam and this boy, just the sound of their breathing, the rain pelting the glass, the turning of a page. And then, the boy begins to read in a voice that’s akin to a whisper, accent thick over his words, the lilt of his tongue serenading Liam with romantic poetry he’s never heard and probably won’t remember, but Liam takes the time to listen the boy’s voice, the words he speaks and how the lines of poetry curl around his heart and make a home in his arteries.

or; Zayn reads poetry to Liam in the middle of the night, in the middle of a bookshop, because they're in love.

Work by coffeewordangel

Turns out Zayn is kind of shit in bed. Liam really loves him anyway.

You Make Me Strong by justyrae

Liam's a pro-boxer, Zayn is his trainer and it turns out Liam has a jealous streak.

When My Heart Is Lonely by Hannyski

19 year old Liam Payne is looking for a way to fund a University course in Behavioural Psychology when he finds the advert for a job playing au pair to three kids. The money sounds too good to be true but it’s worth a shot and that’s how Liam ends up standing on the doorstep of one of the biggest mansions in Bradford, wearing a suit two sizes too big for him and an earnest smile that refuses to falter.

Zayn Malik is 17. Zayn Malik does not need a babysitter. Zayn Malik resents being called a kid. Zayn Malik is spiralling out of control.

Zayn Malik is the oldest sibling placed in Liam's charge.

Inevitably, they clash.

Lifeguard by Mintyshark

Liam works as a lifeguard in his grandparent's neighborhood. But when being distracted on the job leads to a near fatal accident, he finds out how to forgive himself.

Christmas In August by catholicschoolgirl

It sounds so cliché to say that it just happened but – it just happened. Or the one where Zayn is a teen father.

Should Call You That More Often by SoftlyandSwiftly

Based off of a prompt sent to my tumblr: ever since zayn left 1d i've wanted a fic where liam and zayn try to make their relationship work even though they wont be seeing each other as much. skype dates and liam flying zayn out for a tour gig or liam flying home any break he gets to see zayn. for the smut, i imagine zayn being very desperate for liam, constantly wanting his cock and maybe jumping him as soon as he sees him, maybe liam's desperate to eat zayn out, open him up for his dick. ;)

(including a skype call, a phone call, and desperate, needy Zayn but sadly not any tour gigs)

Sounds a Lot Like Love by SoftlyandSwiftly

Zayn doesn't give into this feeling often, but sometimes this is exactly what he needs.

Where Else Would I Be? by SoftlyandSwiftly

Zayn's home again after leaving One Direction, and he's having more trouble adjusting than he'd thought. He's just tired, and he misses the boys. Luckily, a certain boy fixes that.

Literally, Not Figuratively by SoftlyandSwiftly

Louis locks Zayn and Liam in a closet to force them to confront their feelings. But he's missing a crucial detail.

What the Word Means by SoftlyandSwiftly

Zayn's been a little (a lot) in love with Liam for so long now that he doesn't even really think about it anymore. It's just a constant hum in his veins, and he's fine with it he swears, even though Liam has no idea. But then a certain word slips out of his mouth, and well things change.

Just Let Me Know by SoftlyandSwiftly

Zayn wakes up in a hospital, eyes blurry and head pounding, only for a doctor to tell him he's lost two years of his life. And if that's not awful enough, something's different with Liam, off like something has changed, and Zayn doesn't understand. Until he does. And then it's somehow worse.

wanting, wishing, waiting by words_unravel

This is Liam, fourteen to eighteen. This is Zayn, doing his best not to notice.

Not Even the Bad Guys (Could Take it All Away) by iambluehead

"Not even the bad guys in the dark night could take it all away" Or the superhero au where Louis is (literally) electrifying, Niall is like a less green hulk, and Harry has X-ray vision because if there’s a God, he’s cruel. Oh, and don’t forget Zayn, the most powerful superhero since Batman who’s trying to keep himself from falling apart by keeping secrets, and Liam, the ex-soldier and superhero who hasn’t found out what his power is yet, and just hopes it’s something that will save them all.

For Liam, Forever Ago by ThankYouMerlin

And you know it's different now but that doesn't make it easier.

A Full Course Meal by LibbyWrites

Liam had been dreaming about having his own restaurant for a few years. Money was always an issue, though, so when he heard the Food Network was recording a few episodes of Chopped in his city, he let his best friend talk him into participating. Many things could go wrong along the way; from ruthless rivals to impossible ingredients, from unforgiving judges to his own mind getting in the way. He spent long nights fretting about the possibilities and still, he never could have guessed what Chopped really had in store for him.

Life is so simple when I am with you (orphan_account)

Liam rings the doorbell and steps back, shoving his hands in his pockets nonchalantly. After twenty seconds or so the door opens and that’s when Liam’s entire everything does a complete rotation.

Because it’s Zayn who answers the door but it’s not Zayn. Zayn was oversized Nike hoodies and plastic chavvy necklaces and an almost shaved head but now… Zayn is… pretty?

Or the one where Zayn is a manipulative little shit, Liam wants a someone, Harry can sleep through anything, Louis wants to give Liam a kick up the arse and Niall's everyone's fave. Featuring Doniya as Liam's bestie.

i could drink a case of you by lovely_ziam

Liam is a firefighter. Zayn is an art journalist, and neither of them do this - (until they do)

Boy Most Likely by saltwatergirl

Zayn’s the chair of the abstinence club, Liam’s the last person anyone expected to join it.

Long As There Are Stars Above You by alienharry

"There's a meteor shower tonight, actually. Thought this might be something you'd like."

Zayn watches Liam for a moment, takes in his soft grin and honest eyes. He's nothing short of breathtaking on a normal day, but when he does these small simple things, Zayn's head gets a bit fuzzy with it. "This isn't a date, you know"

"I'm aware,” Liam laughs.

"Just making sure."

If Zayn were ready to start dating again, he'd want this. He'd want nights alone on the roof and sharing takeout. He'd want the bookstore dates, silent films, watching meteor showers on the roof and teasing each other until they're both giggling. And he'd want it all with Liam.

This isn't a date, it can't be, but God does Zayn wish it was.

-

Zayn's just finished his undergrad and is ready to stop messing around with strangers and get more serious about his studies as he prepares for his dream job. No relationships, no sex. Which is harder than it sounds when Liam Payne comes into his life.

[giantpower87-blog]

Put it on my tab.

Here you go, chapter 10

Name: Lee Race: Human Class: Herald - None

Level: 9 Health: 190/190 EXP: 1333/2000

Primary Stats:

Power 19(20) Toughness 19(20) Spirit 19(20)

Secondary Stats:

Charisma 8 Courage 5 Deceit 2

Intelligence 48(50) Honor 1 Faith 26

Personal Faith 39

Skills:

Unarmed Combat Initiate Level 2 Swordplay Initiate Level 3

Sneak Initiate Level 3 Cooking Initiate Level 1

Trap Detection Initiate Level 1

Divine Skills:

Golem Sculpting Initiate Level 5

Appreciative Drunk Initiate Level 9

Faith Healing

“Are we done here?” Lee asked. He had needed the extra time to come up with a plan, and Ling had needed to hear the rant in order to fully understand the betrayal, but more empty words didn’t mean much at this point to Lee. He didn’t care why Ramon had been the bad guy: he just cared that he was and that he was the only one who knew where the other herald was. But all this talk was starting to get worse than those movies where two people were about to fight to the death and the hero and the villain always felt like they needed to have a ten-minute monologue first. If one of us is going to die, what the heck is the point in wasting so much time? He looked around the room and realized that it was empty except for Ramon. “Do you have anything else you want to say? Like, last chance to tell me where your boss is.” He added the last bit sarcastically, unable to help himself. Wait, is he stalling? He’s stalling so that the messenger can get out. There’s no one here because the messenger has already left!

“Oh, we’re done here,” Ramon laughed. “This is exactly where your tomb lies.”

“Then how about we get the show on the road?” Lee smiled as he jumped over another rather obvious floor trap and rushed forward to shield-slam Ramon.

In the process of avoiding the obvious floor traps though, he had missed the possibility of a remotely activated one. As soon as he got within five feet of Ramon, the barkeep kicked over one of the chairs.

Click.

The sound was as obvious this time as it had been before, and one of the floorboards moved away less than a second later to reveal another sharp spike hurtling toward Lee. Thankfully, he had transitioned into a bit-more-cautious, tank-oriented, sword-and-board style of fighting, so instead of impaling him, the spike slammed into his shield at just the right angle to change direction and continue its path upward.

“Tch!” Ramon clicked his tongue in anger. “Clearly, you haven’t read the ending of a good book yet: the bad guy always loses. Prepare to die!” The clichéd villain shouted as he lunged forward and swung his flail at Lee.

Lee clung to his protective wooden treasure for dear life after it had just saved him from certain death. He instinctively shoved it forward to block the spiked ball at the end of the long flail, only to have misjudged the trajectory completely. Instead of being blocked, the chain hit the surface of the shield, and the fat five-pound ball wrapped around the front and slammed into his shoulder, the spikes digging into his flesh.

Great, ten damage already. Lee grimaced as he tried to retaliate with a stab. Unfortunately, the weight from the flail had taken away his momentum and sent him sideways at the same time, knocking him into the bar and sending his sword thrust into the empty air.

As he was knocked around, however, he caught sight of a spear hurtling past him that plowed right into Ramon’s chest. It clearly didn’t do enough damage to cause a fatal wound, but it was enough to relieve the pressure off of Lee and force Ramon back. For a moment, the spear seemed like it had gone through Ramon entirely, as the man was pushed back into the wall behind him, but that thought was quickly dispelled as the weapon fell away.

“Hahahaha!” Ramon chuckled, wiping a few drops of blood from his mouth as if he were the hero of a typical Asian martial arts movie. “I saw this scene playing out a few ways, but I never would have imagined this idiot’s stupidity would reach this level. Throwing away your weapon just because you think it’s safe to do so? Fool!” Ramon shouted, quickly turning to the wall and hitting another switch.

The ceiling over the doorway collapsed, burying a girl and sealing off the entrance in the process. At the same time, a seemingly harmless closet door opened up and three Leprechauns walked out.

“They don’t look so tough,” one with red hair observed.

“Tough or not, we get paid the same either way. This ain’t part of our usual orders,” another with brown hair and yellow eyes added.

“I’m expecting a pot of gold for all our work,” the green-eyed one cackled.

Miller finally lost his cool as soon as they finished their little introduction. “Easy?! Idiot?! There is nothing stupid about hitting an enemy when there is an opening! You’re the idiot for thinking that I would only carry one spear!” he yelled, pulling five spears out of his inventory. “Let me show you the power of a man who has no scruples with buying victory in this game so long as it is purchased with evil blood!”

Welp, Ramon, this is on you. You ticked off the bloodthirsty giant. Before the thought had even entered Lee’s head, Miller slammed one of the spears into the ground and released his drunken shout, changing all of Lee’s stats over to their drunken version. Miller immediately hoisted that very same spear into the air and chucked it at the redheaded Leprechaun closest to him. Unlike before, where the spear failed to pierce, this one nailed the guy right into the wall and left him pinned against the wood.

Ling fired off two arrows, sinking one into each of the green eyes of the other Leprechaun, leaving only one remaining. Before the remaining Leprechaun could even scream in shock or respond to the rapid death of his buddies, he was hit by both an arrow in the eye and a spear right in the middle of his sternum.

You have killed Bubblywink. Your party has been awarded 85 copper and 109 experience. Your share of this is 43 copper and 55 experience.

You have killed McWoozy. Your party has been awarded 4 silver, 32 copper and 124 experience. Your share of this is 2 silver, 16 copper and 62 experience.

“Well, that didn’t go as planned . . .” Ramon frowned for a moment before turning to run up the stairs. “But there’s always tomorrow!”

“Careful when you follow!” Lee yelled out, but he didn’t heed his own advice as he charged up the stairs after the fleeing barkeep. When he reached the top of the winding staircase, he realized the entire upper floor was dark--not exactly pitch black, but rather dark in a way that a room with poor blinds near street lamps gets at night. Lee was suddenly super conscious of his surroundings and extremely wary as he tried to avoid any traps Ramon might have set. And, no more than a second into trying to find a hint of a rope or loose floorboard, he heard a click.

Crap, did I step on something? He looked down at his feet only to have a bolt from a crossbow strike him in the arm for 25 damage a second later. The sound of laughter echoed from the end of the hall, and Lee glanced up to see Ramon illuminated by the small amount of light that had snuck in from outside.

“I love making traps and setting up plans, but it’s so rare for me to actually get to see them in action . . . to see how the story plays out.” Ramon broke into that awful cackle of his again. “That’s why this is such a pleasure. I had been so worried that you would die in a boring fashion, that the tale they would tell would be this: Two idiots charged the barracks and were stabbed to death. Who would have thought that it’d be so vibrant instead! Back from the dead, quest for revenge, killed by the friend he trusted! What a perfect twist ending.” Ramon punctuated this final part by firing and missing another bolt at Lee, who was more concerned with searching out the floor for traps at the moment.

It’s too dark, Lee grumbled as he debated making a charge at Ramon. The downstairs layout of the bar had left him wary of booby traps, and unfortunately, Ethan hadn’t managed to make it through the door before the ceiling collapsed. Using the golem would have been an easy solution to both of his lack of sight and his need to discover the traps Ramon had set. Still, as a habit, he peered through the rodent’s eyes as soon as he struggled to use his own. What he saw, in great detail, shook him.

David and the young girl who had been buried when the ceiling collapsed were dying. The young woman couldn’t be a day over twenty, yet she held onto David’s hand and simply smiled at the others as if this were a welcome and expected outcome. A few in the group were crying, but she didn’t seem to be bothered by her fate. Instead, she gripped David’s hand and put on the best face she could despite the pain she had to be in from being still buried from the waist down in debris.

Some of the others were trying to remove the debris, but David just shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve seen a temple of the god with Lee. I know it’s real. It’s all real. They have their own language and everything. He didn’t exaggerate at all,” David continued.

“Just hang in there! You’re not going to die yet!” a woman of roughly the same age as David assured him as she held his other hand. “You’re going to make it. We didn’t put up with all of that together for you to just die on me.”

“You don’t get it,” David continued. “I’m not going to just die. I’m going to the better world, the world where Lee will take care of us. I’m a believer, and he promised.” He coughed a bit of blood then continued. “He promised it’d be a better life than this.”

“Don’t say that! You can go there later,” the dejected old lady insisted. “Come on, Davey, you’ll pull through this.”

“Just . . . promise me.” He coughed again, his eyes starting to droop.

“Yeah?” She answered pleadingly.

“Just promise me that you’ll believe . . . that you’ll be meeting me on the other side when you go too . . .” The light faded out of his eyes, and a part of Lee died along with him.

Lee was torn between the part of him that felt like his con had taken away the man’s will to live, his desire to fight, and the part that was satisfied he had given the old man some small semblance of peace on his deathbed.

The more difficult part was that he was still fighting for his life as he watched David’s death. The entire time, he had been rolling from side to side as he dodged Ramon’s crossbow bolts--bolts that were somehow aimed rather well in the dim light and reloaded at an even more impressive speed.

Ethan, can you understand me? Do you know what you must do? Lee asked the mouse, hoping that this communication between the two wasn’t just words but also intention.

When he felt Ethan nod, he knew that the rat understood, so he switched off his vision through the mouse’s eyes so that he could focus on his struggle against Ramon.

“Come on, oh herald of the end of times! Proclaim my doom to me! Tell me how this story ends!” Ramon’s cackle wormed its way through Lee’s head as he laughed between each sentence.

Screw it. Lee pushed all of his energy into his feet and charged down the right of the hallway toward the lunatic at its end. Right before he reached him, however, Ramon kicked the wall next to him, and two small ankle-high blades popped out from both walls and started rotating toward Lee.

With a reaction speed much faster than he remembered ever having, Lee leapt over the two blades with the grace of a seasoned hurdler before landing and ramming into Ramon shoulder-first. The blow was hard enough to send Ramon through the wall and down a full story onto the ground. Lee quickly pulled out his stashed bow, readied an arrow and shot Ramon in his leg while the other man was still moaning and writhing on the dirt. He had truthfully been aiming for a gut shot, but he was still relatively unpracticed with the bow and his aim was still a bit off.

“Hey!” he called out toward the front of the bar. “Hey, he’s over here! Restrain him until we get the map!” Quickly, the injured Ramon was surrounded by five of the former slaves grabbing onto his limbs.

“We have him, Lord Lee!” a middle-aged man called up after they successfully managed to restrain the barkeep.

Lee couldn’t help but sigh as he stared at the incredibly poorly-made wooden wall that Ramon went through. Man, they just don’t make walls like . . . Lee paused, his brain wanting to say ‘they used to,’ but at the same time, he remembered that this was technically what his society would count as the ‘used to.’  . . . Like they will? He finished the thought before shaking his head and making his way down the stairs back to the storefront.

The first thing he noticed when he arrived downstairs was that the doorway was mostly cleared. He also felt a good deal of relief when he saw that the legs of a young woman weren’t sticking out of it. Does that mean she made it? Lee realized he was hopeful that she had as his feet stopped and his eyes fixated on the spot where she should have been.

“Victory?” Miller asked Lee, interrupting his thoughts. “I didn’t see a kill message for him. There wasn’t any EXP. Did he run, or did we get him?”

“Yes, did we succeed? Did we get him? Did we make that bastard pay?” Ling asked with a mix of anger and excitement in her rushed words.

“He’s outside on the ground and heavily injured,” Lee answered. “The others have him secured so that he can’t run away, but I don’t want to wait too long.”

Lee checked in with Ethan as he made his way to where Ramon was being held. He intended to have the rat start searching the bar for any traps that they might not have found yet, but he held off on that request as soon as he saw what his mouse was doing. The little, winged mouse was in one of the alleyways with one of its tiny little paws on its chest spitting out tiny pieces of wood. When it noticed that Lee was paying extra special attention to him at that moment, it scowled long enough for Lee to understand before it went back to pushing the pieces of debris out of its body.

The command he had given the mouse while he was fighting off Ramon wasn’t to chew the girl free--rather, it had been to crawl into the pile and help the villagers identify which pieces of debris could be removed safest so that they could excavate her more easily. He hadn’t been happy about having to let Ethan act where others could see, but if it came to a choice between saving the girl’s life and keeping one of his powers and abilities a secret, he wasn’t going to regret his decision.

He didn’t know she was okay, however, until he saw her bandaged up and leaning against the wall next to David’s corpse. He was actually worried that she might be dead at first until he saw her chest rise and fall a few times. Well, with the way this world works, it’s not like she has to worry about a permanent injury so long as she doesn't die, he thought to himself as he rounded the corner and came face to face with the pinned-down and crying Ramon.

“Come on, Ramon. Don’t do this.” Lee frowned when he saw the clever, manipulative villain snot-faced and bawling his eyes out like a punched baby. “You’re supposed to be tough and defiant. The daring antagonist that laughs in the face of death,” he continued, feeling rather let down by this development. It had felt like a knife to the metaphorical gut as he endeavored to reason the madness behind such a colossal betrayal of his fellow friends and neighbors when he first realized that they had been duped by Ramon. He had subconsciously shifted Ramon from being the jovial information guy into a cold, calculating demon . . . and that image was once shattered again just as quickly as it had been created.

“Let me go, please! Please, let me go,” Ramon begged between tears. “It hurts so much! Just . . . just let me pull it out! Let me go!”

“Ramon. Ramon, Ramon, Ramon. This is just pathetic. It’s disheartening to see you embarrass yourself like this. It’s just plain cruel.” Lee’s frown turned into a scowl. “These people . . . You betrayed them and sold their lives away like livestock, but you can’t even act like a man about it. You can’t even accept any responsibility for your failure. What happened to your laughter?” he asked as he walked closer. “I guess that all the edgy life-doesn’t-matter crap falls out the window when it’s your life on the line, doesn’t it?” Lee knew his speech was probably stupid, but he felt he deserved at least one monologue. He had taken a bolt in the arm and had been forced to reveal one of his trump cards, so the least he could get out of this was a moment to feel like the cool guy while he ranted on.

“But I’ll tell you what,” Lee continued, now close enough to kick Ramon’s face without moving his foot more than a few inches. “Why don’t you help me out? You see, like you said, I’m stupid. I’m the unimaginative idiot who relies on technology to create complacency. So, I need your help after all. I need a professional storyteller: someone who can help me figure out an end to this story where I don’t kill you slowly. As slowly as possible. Can you do that for me, Ramon? Can you tell me an end to this story where I don’t chop off one of your fingers every few minutes? Followed by your toes, your legs, and your arms? Can you stop me from having to whittle away until you’re nothing but a stump? Can you do that for me, Ramon? Because, right now, I think everyone here kind of wants to see that ending. It’s their happily ever after. Am I right, guys?” he turned to the group and addressed the last question to them. It was met by a series of emphatic affirmatives. There wasn’t a single person who didn’t sound excited about that ending.

“I . . .” Ramon paused to suck the snot and drool back up his nose and mouth respectively. “I don’t know. Please, just let me go.”

Lee almost felt some bit of pity for him, but then he remembered the condition that he had found the villagers in, and it instantly vanished. He took a moment to look at Ramon’s injuries, making sure that he could survive what he had planned, before leaning over and pulling one of his swords out. “I was really hoping you’d say that.”

“Wait! Wait! No, what are you going to do?!” Ramon pleaded, his voice passing any metric that might be used to gauge a scream by a mile as it pierced the air. But Lee ignored it. He blocked it out of his head and did his best to keep his stomach down as he used his sword to follow through on his promise, slicing one of Ramon’s pinkies right off of his hand.

“GODS NO!!” Ramon’s scream reached a decibel level that made the stomach-churning act of taking off a man’s finger feel that much worse. The only thing that helped Lee follow through the action was when he thought about what type of hell on earth this monster of a person had put so many people through.

How is killing so easy when torturing is like hell on me? Lee didn’t understand himself at all, but he still had to do his best to steel his nerves. He needed Ramon to be afraid. Terrified. I got to look up more about this. This can’t be the best way to do this. Lee closed his eyes and put the act out of his head for a second. “Alright,” he began again after calming himself enough. “Now, you’ve only got nine digits left on your hands before I have to start moving to the toes. Why don’t you tell me that story? You told me that you love stories. Surely you weren’t lying to me. You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” Lee asked.

“No, no of course not,” Ramon insisted over and over again. “I can tell you a story! I can tell you a story!”

“Well, good. Now, why don’t you tell me the story I want to hear, or I will have to make sure your right hand matches your left.”

“The . . . the valley in the east. His temple is in the east,” Ramon said, pausing to suck more snot back into his nose. “If you follow the path toward Middlefart, just . . .” He paused again, devolving back into a whimpering mess.

“Ramon!” Lee slapped him after a minute. “Stick with me. Where is it off the path?”

“T-take a left after the first signpost. The trail is easy to find. Follow the trail . . . I-It’s in the valley,” he finished.

Wait, how can I trust him? Lee suddenly realized the error of this method. The chances of Ramon handing over accurate information were just as high as the chances of him leading them into another trap. This sad sack routine could be another ploy to make him more believable. He could just be wearing another mask. “Okay, Ramon, do you have a map in the bar?”

“I . . .” He paused. He paused long and hard.

“Ramon, my blade is getting antsy. Do you have a map, or do I have another finger? I can’t trust you without a map, can I?” Lee asked, levying his blade against Ramon’s next pinky.

“It’s . . .” Ramon had stopped crying. It was evident that his earlier assumptions of him were wrong. This was a ploy. Ramon knew exactly what he’d ask for. “It’s in the dark liquor bottle labeled Quester’s Fury under the bar. There isn’t anything in the bottle. I just painted the inside so it would look like it’s full,” Ramon finally said.

There. “Ramon, I’m going to let you in on a secret. I have a method of scouting, one that lets me see a place without ever having to go there. I can know if you’re lying to me before any traps are sprung,” Lee said, referencing Ethan as indirectly as possible. “If I use this method, by the end of the night, I’ll know if you’re lying. If you are . . . Well, I can’t help you then. But if you’re not, then I’ll let you live in this town without fear of death for the rest of your life--until you die of something other than beating or stabbing or general weapon and fist related injuries.”

Ramon stayed frozen for a long time. “There is a trap on the way. You have to spin the signpost to disarm it.”

Lee patted his head patronizingly. “That’s good, Ramon. That’s good.”

“Are you going to keep your word?” The now-once-more arrogant face of the villain was back, much to Lee’s actual joy. He couldn’t take the crying. His face was still mucus-covered from his play earlier, however, destroying any ability to take him seriously or treat him like the actually ominous evil character he was.

Ethan, can you fly over there and check it out for me? We’re going to need to do some planning. He sent the directions to his little mouse friend who had just finished heaving the last piece of wood out of his gut.

“Just take this scum into the main room, get the map, and we’ll deal with him in a bit,” Lee ordered the villagers. Between all the murdering, the torture, and the bossing around of villagers that now somehow felt like henchmen in the back of his head, he was really starting to feel less like a prophet, demigod, savior, hero or whatever else and much more like the wicked, evil boss. The only thing he was missing was a permanent base.

Though, I do now own a tavern . . . Lee looked up at the building, only to see the hole Ramon had left. He spent so much time installing trap after trap in his bar, but in the end, he was done in by cheap corner-cutting during the building process. That wall might as well have been thatch the wood was so thin. He let out a hollow laugh at the irony.

“Umm . . . ” The lady Lee had seen holding David’s hand at his last moments came up just then to Lee and meekly lowered her head.

“I’m sorry about David. We’ll do everything we can to make sure he’s buried and treated properly,” Lee said as soon as he realized who she was. “He’s gone to a better place now,” he said with certainty, even though he had no idea if David actually made it to the upstairs or the downstairs of his own conceptions of the afterlife. He wasn’t even sure this world was connected or watched over by the god he actually believed in, but saying that wouldn’t matter now. Lee was going straight to the worst punishment imaginable for all this blasphemy and paganistic teaching as far as his own personal religion was concerned, so he might as well at least do it right and console people and make them feel better along the way.

“Will . . . Will we be together there when I die?” she asked with a level of love and determination he had not come face to face with before. It wasn’t just in her voice or her near-mute-but-determined words that confronted him with a level of adoration he was unfamiliar with. It was in her every gesture: her eyes were swollen and sparkled from as-yet-unfallen tears, and her lips were pressed together so tightly after she spoke that they vanished into each other. It was visible, and it was touching, and it made Lee feel all the more awful that David had died because of him.

“Of course you will. And it’ll be a much better life than this one was,” he assured her, placing a hand on her shoulder and trying not to be a creep while he comforted her--a talent he had no experience with. She looked him straight in the eye, wiped her eyes dry with her arms, and then pulled out a knife.

“If you live a good and full life,” Lee quickly added as he stopped her blade. What the hell?! You can’t do that! There’s a difference between faith and stupidity here! “If you live a good, honest and long life, you’ll definitely be with him in the afterlife. As one of the first true believers, he was so determined and faithful, going so far as to die in battle for a cause within such a short period of time, that I promise he’ll have one of the highest positions in the afterlife. You need to work hard and earn a seat next to him.”

He wasn’t sure if he stopped her suicidal impulses, but at the very least he had quieted them. She pursed her lips as she stared at him before she nodded and headed into the bar on her own, leaving Lee alone.  He couldn’t help but worry as he watched her go. He sincerely hoped that she wouldn’t off herself because of her faith in his charlatan antics.

“How is it that you’ve actually met a god, yet you view this all as blasphemous, Charlatan nonsense?” Augustus’s voice pierced his mind with familiar background noise that often accompanied voice chat servers in video games. “I mean, come on! I’ve heard of people having trouble believing in a higher power because there is no proof, but you’re tangibly living in an entire world of proof after meeting the very god himself. It’s not like I’m asking you to preach about some spaghetti monster in the sky.”

“But I still have faith in someone else, you know?” Lee said. “First come, first serve. Literally.”

“Your mother would be so disappointed.” Augustus let out a hearty laugh, and Lee could swear there was the sound of a beer glass hitting a table in the background.

“Yeah, she would.” He nodded at the thought and then put Augustus out of his head completely as he went back into the battlefield of a bar, noting the potentially suicidal girl sitting next to David’s body where the injured teen had been moments ago. I guess they took her somewhere to rest, he thought, the whole scene still feeling too chaotic to grasp the full picture.

-----

While Ethan was out searching for the spot that Ramon had mentioned, the group found the map and laid it out on one of Ramon’s tables after dragging him into the bar. After they searched the bar, they had found not only the map but also several other unequipped traps and gadgets, making Lee thankful that Ramon hadn’t had the time to finish setting them all up before they arrived.

“So, do we actually let him live?” someone asked.

“Who needs a beer? Come on, people! Free beerrrrr!” Miller shouted from the bar as he started pouring glasses. “We don’t even have to pay! What a loot haul! Am I right, Lee?”

Lee’s face scrunched up as he looked at his overexcited paladin. Yes, you’re right. This has been a great loot haul, but can you maybe learn to read the mood some? Everyone other than Miller was either sober and somber or drunk and depressed. There wasn’t a cheerful face to be found anywhere in the room. It hadn’t been a clean victory, and as much as Lee hated to admit it, he missed the talkative guide already. Even though he had only known him for a day, he was already starting to miss David’s particular sense of humor.

“Here’s one for David,” he said, hoisting the glass in front of him and chugging it.

“Oh, are we drinking for the fallen?” Miller piped up, talking around a mouth full of food.

“What are you eating?” Lee asked, noticing for the first time that his friend was munching away at something.

“Fried chicken? Seems the cook finished making a few batches before he was killed,” Miller responded, not even bothering to chew his food properly as he talked.

“He killed Jeffrey?” someone asked.

“That’s horrible,” the girl on his right said as she jumped up and went to the kitchen.

“Look at the bright side: it means he wasn’t in on it.” Miller could really be an insensitive jerk when he wanted to. “Wait, I got it! Let’s have another drink for him too!” he offered, likely because he saw her horrified expression. “I mean, Lee did it for David, right? It has to be a religious thing for Augustus. He is a god of alcohol, after all.” With marked enthusiasm, Miller poured several beer glasses as quickly as possible from the tap.

“Yeah . . . to David!” the table said in unison before chugging a round of beer just like Lee had done. When they finished, they grabbed the fresh brews that Miller had poured.

“And to Jeffrey!” Miller shouted, and they downed that round before grabbing another.

Lee was caught between his fascination with how quickly a ‘religious tradition’ had started and how much he wanted to smack some sense into Miller so that he would stop acting so happy-go-lucky. He glanced over worriedly at the tables of morose people drinking quietly next to the Leprechauns’ corpses. The Firbolg really didn’t seem to have any clue as to how to act appropriately.

“So . . . what do we do now?” one of the younger girls asked. They were all on their third beer, and her eyes kept darting between the entrance, where a few of the regular townsfolk were, and back to Lee. The few individuals poking their heads in weren’t the first group of people to pass by, stare, and then leave without saying anything. It was a small town, and Lee and his followers had already caused an uproar in the middle of the day. If there was someone who hadn’t heard about what had happened already, Lee would be surprised. He was sure that at least a few of the onlookers were parents or loved ones of the kidnapped victims, but for some reason, none of them intruded on the scene.

“I don’t know,” Lee answered, looking down at his cup. They had been drinking for half an hour, and no one had really said much during that time. Miller poured drinks and handed out the chef’s last batch of fried chicken, Ling stared at the table as if there were some great secret to be had in it, and Lee just watched. He studied the face of each and every person in the room. There were quite a few women and some older men, but there weren’t any guys younger than David. It was as if they just hadn’t found the men necessary. Or maybe they were worried that the men would have been strong enough to fight back, making them harder to kidnap and then control.

The first thing I’m doing when I get back home is donate to foundations that stop human trafficking, Lee decided. He had plenty of money saved up from the fact he wasn’t a socialite but had a very well-paying job. That decision untied the knot in his gut for a minute until he realized how rarely he followed through on these type of things. He was the type of guy who constantly thought ‘let me give my first class seat to that soldier on his way home’ or ‘I should let that old lady take my seat on the bus,’ but then he’d always waffle until someone else did it instead. Whatever temporary good he felt would be erased by the shame of not actually doing anything.

“I’m tired,” Ling sighed, the first one to put forth any semblance of a direction.

“I am too . . .” a girl in her twenties agreed. She had just come downstairs after helping move the doorway-collapse-victim to a bed, and she picked up a beer from Miller before sitting down.

“I could drink more.” Miller’s voice came in much louder than the others’ like it was an advertisement on the radio. “I could also go for more killing. Lee, if you’re not tired, we can go hunt down and butcher some wolves while the women rest. I wonder . . . How do you think they would taste if you fried them like this chicken? I bet they’d be delicious! Fried wolf, fried deer . . . I want to try fried cow!”

“You know, you can fry other foods too. Like vegetables.” Lee laughed. The absurdity of Miller’s train of thought may have been out of place, but it provided a comedic relief from the tense atmosphere.

“Really? You have to show me how to do that. Can you make some right now? Better yet, can you make that fancy fried coating around an egg?” Miller asked with wide eyes.

“We can’t take everyone with us,” Lee responded, switching topics. The diversion was nice, but he didn’t want to get carried off on Miller’s train of thought. As he glanced around the room, it finally occurred to him what had been bothering him. On some level, he had known it the entire time and had been puzzling it out, but it hadn’t been at the forefront of his mind. Compared to what was coming, the fight through this trap-laden bar was probably only a minor scuffle. In a way, it might have even been a blessing.

“I don’t care what you say, I’m coming with you. I want to make him pay, and I don’t want anything to happen . . .” Ling started off rather vehemently, then she trailed off midway through. “I’m coming with you.”

Lee tried to nix the idea again.“But, what if--”

“I’m coming with you,” she repeated again with even stronger resolve.

“Okay, we got one person that will come with us. Miller, you’re definitely going to be coming with us to kill the other Herald, right?” Lee didn’t feel like arguing with Ling again. She had essentially saved his life by coming last time, so if she insisted, what could he say? She had bailed him out the last time he was in a tight spot, and she had shown that she could hold her own.

“I’ve been thinking . . . if we need a sacrifice, I could beat someone to death with their own limb.” Miller’s gore-heavy sense of devotion was rather disturbing to watch, but Lee had no doubt that he planned on realizing his idea. He had always been faithful to his word in that regard.

“Don’t change the subject. I’m coming too,” the girl who had just walked downstairs added.

The old woman who had held David’s hand during his final moments stood up. “Like Porter said, I’m coming as well. I don’t care if I die, and I want to be of some use. I want to make sure no one goes through what we did.”

“Henslee . . . ” Porter looked at the older woman pensively. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that Henslee, as she was apparently called, was now void of everything but hate. That she was ready to die.

“I . . . I want to help if you need me. But . . . but I really just want to go home. I want to see my dad. I want to . . .” another girl at a table in front of Lee started trying to speak, but she just couldn’t get the words out. She had been looking sad for hours, and opening her mouth caused the dam to break and she burst into tears. One tear fell, slowly rolling down her cheek, and then a flood. The sobbing was soft and quiet, and whatever bravado the others had built up was washed away by that flood of tears.

“I want to go home too,” an older man in the back said. “I’ve been away for so long.”

“Wait, stop,” Lee said loudly, silencing the group. “I won’t stop you if you insist on coming, but we’re all tired. We’ve been up all night, and life hasn’t been kind to us either. So, why don’t those of you who want to go home just head on home? It won’t make you any less of a man or woman. You’ve done everything above and beyond, so just get some sleep. I’m sure most of you have lives life to rebuild, so you might as well get started now.”

“But are you going to be okay?” the older man asked. “Are they going to be okay?”

“We . . . might need more people. Tomorrow, we’ll try to recruit able-bodied men and women who are used to fighting--not people who need to be with their families. If you need to go, go now. Take a beer for the road, and we’ll hopefully see you all when this whole thing is over.” No one moved at first, but eventually, they started leaving one at a time. When all was said and done, four women and two men remained.

“You know, the chances of us dying aren’t exactly low.” Lee looked at those who didn’t leave. They didn’t appear to have any muscles, and they had held their weapons like they were first-time LARPers playing around with Nerf bats. They didn’t have the smooth, skilled archery that Ling did.

“What do we do about him?” Amber asked, pointing toward Ramon. She was one of the women who had stayed behind and appeared to be around the same age as Porter. Ramon had been bound and gagged in the corner the entire time the group was lugubriously drinking, and someone would go over and kick him every now and then, but no one had killed him yet since Lee hadn’t sentenced him.

“Would you feel better if we killed him?” Lee asked.

“Yeah, absolutely. Let’s do it slowly!” Amber shouted with more enthusiasm than a girl talking about killing someone should have. “Make him suffer on the way out!”

“I say we go with your original idea: We take a digit off every day until he dies,” Henslee chimed in, giving Lee the chills.

“We could hang him or cut off his head . . . maybe be humane about it. We’re better than him, aren’t we?” one of the two men gave his own input. “I wouldn’t feel right about that other idea. It seems like it would make us worse than he is.”

Something, something . . . forgiveness. Wait, if I make them forgive him now, then that would ruin me. I can’t lose more followers! Lee had checked to affirm one of his suspicions when David died, and he had been proven correct. He had only lost one personal follower, and he hadn’t gained any zealots. In fact, he hadn’t gained any faith since the fight started. So they all want vengeance, but they all want it to differing degrees. I could say something about how he’ll suffer some horrible fate in the afterlife, but I don’t want them to think this religion is all fire and brimstone, even though that is clearly the direction Miller wants to take it.

“How about we think about what he did to you all,” Lee said after a moment. “I think that would be the best way to punish him.”

“What do you mean?”

Lee felt that the plan he was slowly forming would easily be accepted. He just had to lead them to it. “Well, for the past few months, he’s been sending you all to a hellish camp with little food or comfort to mine away nonstop, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah. He did, and they treated us awfully! They . . . ” Amber bit her lip and swallowed whatever she was going to say further. “They just treated us like tools to be used at their discretion.”

“Then, that’s easy. Why don’t we give him back exactly the same punishment he gave you,” Lee said.

“What do you mean?” Ling asked, lifting up her head.

“Well, between the lot of you, there couldn’t have been more than sixty. We add in the two or three months you all served at maximum, and that’s at most one hundred and eighty months or fifteen years,” Lee continued. “So in order for him to fully suffer as much as you did, he needs to suffer for at least fifteen years--if not more. He needs to suffer in the same way you did, with no fewer arduous and painful experiences. But his punishment will be worse than yours.”

Lee smiled. He felt a joyful dichotomy as his scheme seemed both evil and vindicated of evil at the same time. He was going to make someone break, make their life awful and torture them, but he wasn’t going to use torture by the definitions that he imagined. Rather, he was going to make him go through exactly what he put others through. That was why he felt vindicated even though the whole thing reeked of wickedness.

“How will it be worse?” one asked.

“Well, we’re going to put him through worse labor. We’re going to use him until his body breaks, day after day, but he won’t have companionship. You all had each other. You had families to think about returning to. There were those that cared for you, but he will be alone. He will suffer alone, day after day, with barely enough food, no free time, no guests, and no god to watch over him after we kill the Herald and last bastion for the lord he chose.” Lee stood up and stared directly at Ramon. “Fifteen years minimum. We need to make sure he doesn’t die a day sooner.” The punishment might not exactly be the same as what the women went through, but the pain of solitude would normally break a normal person by itself. Hermits existed, but they were rare.

The others looked at Ramon, and even the man who was against torture nodded.

“It’s cruel,” the man said, “but it’s no less than he deserves.”

“Indeed. If he had made a point of understanding how his actions affected others, how they would feel if he was the one they were done against, then we wouldn’t be here today. We’d all be drinking in this bar, enjoying delicious food, and exchanging stories. Lee had to stop himself from smiling. Great ones, too. There’s about a thousand LitRPG and Fantasy books you would have loved, idiot, Lee cursed at him silently.

“That seems fair, but can I stab him once?” Miller asked. “He made fun of my spear. I really want to gore him just once.”

“No, but you can slap him a few times if it makes you feel better.” Lee had to shoot down the stabbing idea right away. He’d normally be all for it, but if each of the people who suffered because of Ramon stabbed him, he’d be dead before nightfall.

Miller seemed perfectly fine with the idea, so he put down his beer and walked over in front of Ramon. He reached down, picked Ramon up with one hand, and then slapped him so hard the man was sent sprawling two feet to the left. “Oh, man, that was a blast. Come on, everyone, get a slap in! It will make you feel so much better. I think I’m going to have to slap him a few times tomorrow.” He picked up Ramon again and dragged him over to the table, where the girls and the guy at the table actually did just as he suggested. In fact, Amber slapped him three times.

“Well, does anyone else have an issue with the punishment?” Lee asked. “I know it might seem light, but trust me: he’ll suffer worse than you did.”

Porter frowned at Lee then slapped Ramon so hard that even Miller wasn’t able to keep ahold of him, sending him to the floor once again. “Fine. But I want to be able to hit him whenever I feel like it.”

“Could they do that to you at the mines?” Lee asked.

“Yes, and they did,” Porter retorted, spitting on Ramon at the same time.

“That’s fine then. Whatever they did to you, feel free to do to him. But I think we have more important matters to discuss now, like the battle ahead.” Lee returned to his table but didn’t sit down.

“Are we heading over there right now?”

“No.” Lee shook his head. Since he was able to fly, Ethan had managed to reach the area relatively quickly, but Lee didn’t trust Ramon’s word about the number of traps that might be hidden along the way. He wanted to make sure the area was thoroughly searched, and even Ethan seemed eager to double and triple check the pathway. The small mouse had started working his way back on his tiny little mouse feet while looking for levers, ropes, pitfalls, or loose earth. He was even using his extremely acute mouse nose to sniff around for possible poisons or odd smells. Fool me once, Ramon, good on you. But you won’t fool me twice. “We’re not ready yet. I need you all to do me a favor, something that will help me greatly.”

“What do you need?” Porter asked, slapping Ramon again before Miller dragged him over to the other table.

“Well . . .” Lee looked at the remaining group. “I said we needed to recruit able-bodied people, but I’m just a stranger to these lands. I know that the others I’ve rescued are probably with their families or sleeping, and they’ll bear witness to my story, but it’d be better if you all went out ahead of me. Before I have to say anything tomorrow, I’d like it if you all can go door to door and recruit the best warriors and hunters so that we can put an end to this blight before it reappears. Tell them to meet here an hour after sunrise tomorrow. We’ll serve breakfast and make sure everyone is well geared before we head out. After you’ve done everything you can, just try to prepare yourselves. Try to say goodbye to anyone you meet tomorrow,” Lee finished.

“I’ll get my brother. He’s the best swordsman in town,” Porter said.

“What about your brother, Bock? Isn’t Eim supposed to be a hunter?” Amber asked, looking at the man who had reservations about torture earlier.

“Yeah, he is. I’ll go find him. You should come with me, Brandi. He’d jump off a roof if you asked, so it’s a sure thing with you along,” Bock answered.

“Okay.” The oldest woman still remaining, around forty at the least, nodded. “But I need to also talk to my father and sister. They’re both great at fighting.”

The five girls and two guys talked about who they were going to recruit and then eventually left. One of the two men carried Ramon along with him to ensure that he wouldn’t escape while they went out. The town didn’t have a jail, and even if they did, no one wanted to trust someone else to watch over him. Even the people they had talked about recruiting were either friends or family of victims, so it was obvious that there was still some real concern that one of them might betray them just as Ramon had done.  

Miller went into the kitchen to mess around with the food, leaving Lee and Ling alone. She turned to him as soon as the Firbolg was out of the room, and with the same sharp tone she had earlier, she said, “I don’t want to drag my dad into this.”

Why is she so terse? Did I do something to make her mad? “I understand.”

“Good.” She scrunched up her face and went back to staring at the beer glass in front of her.

Lee looked at her, then looked away, trying not to stare as he wracked his brain for what to say. This all felt more awkward than a blind date with a vegan at a steakhouse. “Do you want to at least see him before you leave? I’m sure he’s worried about you.”

Her voice seemed even tenser when she answered. “No. I’m not going home.”

“Okay . . .” Lee looked to where Miller had disappeared into the kitchen, hoping to be rescued from this. They had been just fine in the mine shaft and even on the road back to the town. He wasn’t entirely sure what had changed, but something was definitely different. “Mi--”

“You’re going to go out again. You’re going out killing again, aren’t you? That’s why you want me to leave.”

“What?” Lee was starting to see why she was behaving the way she was. “Well, yeah, but just some wolves around town. We need food for breakfast, we need practice and . . . experience.” He was constantly lost about what was and wasn’t an okay topic for NPCs, so he didn’t just say EXP.

“Invite me to the party then,” she said. “We’ve been traveling together for a while. Invite me.”

“I can’t . . . It’s technically Miller’s party,” he admitted. And I’ve been stuck in it without a choice for a while, and I’m not even sure how to leave.

“Miller! Invite me to the party right now, or I won’t let Lee cook you any fried chicken! And I’ll bust every beer keg in here until you have to go to the tavern next door for your drinks!” Ling demanded.

Miller popped his head out of the kitchen, a giant drumstick between his teeth and a mystery barrel in his hands. “Can do, boss lady,” he said--or at least that is what Lee thought he said. He couldn’t be certain since it was hard to make out anything with the food blocking most of the sound.

“Good.” Ling’s stern face cheered up a little. “Now, don’t leave me when you go training.”

“Me or him?” Miller asked, his voice now clear as he had somehow managed to devour the entire drumstick in that incredibly short amount of time.

Ling looked over at him, rolled her eyes, and then looked back to Lee. “So, are we going now, or are we resting first?”

“Well, I think we’ve all pulled all-nighters before, so let’s head out now and then come back to get some rest before the sun sets. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

“Hey, if I throw a wolf on top of a sword you’re holding, and that counts as the finishing blow, would Augustus give me or you the credit?” Miller asked as he put away the mystery barrel. “I mean, it’s a serious question. I need to figure out what counts as a good sacrifice to Augustus, and since I’m your first Paladin, does that mean I need to worry about a crest? A symbol of sorts? Are there some fancy colors you want your order of Paladins to wear?”

Lee had little to no talent in artistic design despite apparently being the heir to a God of Alcohol and Crafts, so he had no idea what to do for the symbol. Colors, on the other hand, he could actually do. “Are dyes cheap around here? Is it easy to dye armor?” he asked, wanting to pick colors anyone could use.

“Oh, yeah. Dyes come in from the city of CowTip all the time. I want to dye every piece of armor I have. BLACK! Just really black. Super dark black. Then, when I stab people, the blood will wash over my armor, and I’ll look awesome.” Miller went full goth for a moment, making Lee cringe.

Ling pouted.“No, that won’t do at all. Black is a very expensive dye. I can’t afford it.”

Well, that’s two reasons not to use black. I’m from the modern era where we specialize in war, and no one uses black unless they’re sneaking in somewhere at night or starring in a spy thriller. Instead, they’d always wear the color of their surroundings. “Green. That’s my color,” Lee said.

“But you’re supposed to be the god of burney burney--”

“And rebirth. And what burns better than leaves or symbolizes life more than nature? The colors of nature are my colors, but green specifically.” He knew Miller really wanted black, but he’d also probably accept red, yellow, white or even blue since they all were related to flames, which he no doubt thought were ‘very cool.’

“Green is cheap.” Ling nodded her approval while doing the math on her fingers. “Green is very cheap.”

“Do they make the dye from local grass and leaves?” Lee asked, hoping it was the case so that it would act as the perfect camouflage.

“Yeah, they use a lot of the local grass and leaves to make the dye,” Ling responded as she continued to go through some numbers on her fingers.

Lee watched her go from a frown, to normal, to pouting, to a deep frown, to normal and then back to pouting in the course of two minutes while counting on her fingers. “Miller, check around the bar for Ramon’s cash stash. Give enough of it to Ling so that she stops worrying about the money.”

“Sure, and if she doesn’t have enough, it won’t matter. I know a good spot near here with dozens and dozens of wolves. We’re going to be swimming in blood!. There are big wolves too! Dire wolves! And I’ve heard there is even a Gan Ceann King near there too. It’ll be a blast, and we’ll leave swimming in cash and blood and blood and cash!” Miller’s grin was ear to ear as he rambled on for another few minutes. He seemed to be incredibly happy with himself as he made hand gestures and used his spear as a prop to talk about all the butchery they’d be able to do.

Lee laughed, cutting him off after a few minutes. “I’m sold. Let’s head out now.”

“Wait, wait. I haven’t even told you about the best way to kill a--”

“Just show me,” Lee chuckled. Even Ling seemed to be amused by it all.

-----

The entire process was a lot easier than before. Whereas previously had Lee struggled to kill a single wolf, the swords he had obtained as loot were much higher quality and the shield provided a lot of defense, so he barely took any damage while still being able to deal it out.

One thing he noticed about the fights was that armor made the importance of hitting weak spots far more valuable as it got better and better. The armor seemed to create a flat reduction and not a percentage. This meant that, when a wolf went to bite him for six damage, his armor, which had seven points of armor, completely canceled out the damage. On the other hand, his natural armor was very low, so if a wolf ever bit him on any of his skin, he’d take the full damage. Even with the regular starting sword that only did four damage, he was able to do nine more damage than when they started. Armor was a flat increase, and so was damage. Each point of power seemed to offer exactly one more damage to his weapon, regardless of what the weapon was. Lee knew that this meant skill with how to take a blow and where to strike would become increasingly important as he gained levels in this world.

For this reason, while Miller just went about his usual carnage with seemingly little care for grace or style, Lee spent the entire time focusing on his sword skill and doing his best to direct blows he couldn’t dodge onto the armored parts of his body. He went three fights in a row without even taking damage due to this.

During this time, Lee was also focusing on how to tap into Ethan’s senses and movements more finely without breaking concentration. It was at this point that he got a full understanding of the area they were going to. It was a stone fort in the middle of an open field by the river. The stones were placed in such a way that the whole thing completely lacked any mortar. While the size of the fort wasn’t exactly up to castle standards and didn’t tower more than twenty feet off the ground, it was easily as large as a small mansion. Considering the fact it had been built in the last 2 weeks, Lee knew without a doubt that the Herald had to have been using slave labor or have a ton of people working for him. Neither case was particularly good news.

Before Ethan even got a chance to scout inside the fort, he noticed a few of the guards on the wall pointing at him. One of them even shot an arrow, which missed horribly, but the attempt was still made to let Ethan know that his encroachment wouldn’t pass, and that they had guards on the walls. They had five to be exact: one on each wall and two at the main gate. The gate was large and wooden, and Lee hoped it was made as cheaply as Ramon’s bar, but he doubted it.

The only good news to come from to the whole stealthy venture was that there weren’t any traps leading up to the fort. The little autonomous golem had been incredibly thorough, and he couldn’t find a single booby trap.

Lee had the rodent return home once the report was done, which took didn’t take long at all considering how fast the winged golem flew. The mouse wasn’t the only one being productive and making great headway. Thanks to Ling’s arrows never missing a vital weak spot, Miller’s shout continuously causing incredibly tough and coordinated beasts to act like drunken idiots at the start of each fight, and the general fact that Lee was no longer running around with the worst gear imaginable with no idea of how to fight, they were able to slaughter their way through several mobs of enemies without a problem. At one point, it was even going so smoothly that Miller stopped using his weapon altogether and simply ripped the arm off of a giant, twelve-foot-tall corrupted sloth and beat it to death with its own arm. When Lee asked what he was doing, he only replied: practice.

Source: http://thebathrobeknight.blogspot.com/2017/10/put-it-on-my-tab.html