Collision; Larry

30.

The last day Zayn spends as a permanent Earth resident is unexpectedly emotional.

He’s been looking forward to moving to Grimm—to meet his parents, to live closely to Liam, to grow acquainted with a completely new place. To get to know the ins and outs of his golden hands, enough to finally toss his gloves away. To start over, really start over, with a boy he feels so much and so tenderly for, and perhaps even with a family he can feel like he belongs to.

Not so say he’s not nervous about things not working out with his parents—it’s been almost twenty years, after all. They haven’t been present to help shape the person he’s become. Zayn’s already conditioned to be independent—maybe his time to truly connect with them has passed, maybe it’ll feel stilted and distant. Maybe they’ll look at him, his ruffled hair and inked arms and not like what they see. Maybe they’ll stuff him into tight suits and give him a strict set of rules and lay out a future for him that he doesn’t want. Zayn doesn’t know a lot about how royalty in Grimm differs from royalty on Earth, but he hopes with all his heart they’ll accept him for who he is and for what he wants to do.

(He’d like to do art. Even if he has to have a title such as prince bestowed upon him, he’d like to keep doing art.)

Maybe they won’t even want him. Maybe it’s all an unbelievable coincidence, maybe Zayn really just is a sad, sad orphan with a genetic defect that makes him susceptible for magic, or something. Admittedly it sounds a bit far-fetched, but knowing his luck, he’s not ready to rule out anything.

“There you are!” suddenly rings out behind him, startling him out of his thoughts. Zayn whips around to see Liam standing there, balancing two boxes on each other and trying to look casual about his caution to not let them fall.

“Here I am,” Zayn confirms weakly, but a small smile nips at his mouth at the sight of his boyfriend trying to hold onto the boxes and blow a strand of hair from his eye simultaneously. He always tries so hard, Liam. No matter if it regards saving someone’s life or just carrying a damn box, he always tries just as hard.

“I tried to stock your books in these the best I can—I divided them by color, because that’s how they were in your bookshelf so I thought you might prefer it.”

As Liam talks, Zayn walks up to him and lightly brushes the stubborn hair away from Liam’s forehead. Both of them pretend they don’t notice Liam’s voice waver just a teeny, tiny bit when Zayn’s fingertips brush Liam’s skin, but it makes Zayn’s chest tingle pleasantly anyway.

“You’re doing great,” he promises, upturn of his lips turning just slightly teasing.

One of the most heart-warming things about Liam—of which, admittedly, there are many—is the way his eyes light up whenever he successfully helps someone, Zayn thinks. He tries so hard because he wants to help so badly. It’s sort of whiplash-inducing, sometimes, to be around someone so genuinely kind.

Zayn doesn’t voice any of this out loud. Instead, he grabs the top box still verging on making an escape from Liam’s safe hold, and together they carry the books into Zayn’s increasingly cramped hallway. It’s coming together now, all of it.

There’s a lot to worry about, yes. But he also finds comfort knowing that even if his biological family proves to be rocky, he’ll always have his found family in four other boys. He’ll be closer to them.