Those first few weeks pass uneventfully. He gets sent, with small expeditions, into the town, to scope out the scenery and the people. Although he probably isn’t supposed to, Liam falls a little bit in love with everything around him. Before the army, he’d never left his hometown of Wolverhampton, and everything here is vibrant and raucous and scented like nowhere he’s ever been. He trails his other comrades around the markets, touching fruits, smiling at the woman who press trinkets into his hand, attempting to hide his gun as best as he can.
One of these expeditions, he gets put into a group with Zayn.
It doesn’t surprise Liam to see the boy speaking easily with some people. The people seem to trust his wide, beautiful eyes, and the way that his grin is disarming and goofy, almost too innocent for a man in the army. Liam is, to put it mildly, interested. He doesn’t want to learn about killing people. He wants to learn about getting along, about the entire world just sitting down at a tea party or something and being friends. Of course, that goes out the window in two seconds.
He’s walking beside Zayn, silent and attempting not to ask him a million questions, when the boy veers off to the side.
There is a small girl, probably no more than five, crouched in a doorway. Her black hair is matted to her forehead with sand and grit, her eyes wide and terrified at Zayn’s approach. Then, he opens his mouth. A smile and some of that language, the one with all of the sounds that Liam’s tongue isn’t talented enough to make, and she is grinning back, Zayn sinking to place some money into her outstretched palm.
Someone in front of Liam sneers, “Fucking terrorist. We’re supposed to kill them, and he pays them.”
Liam stares hard at the ground. He doesn’t have a right to step in, doesn’t know how Zayn would even feel about having his honor defended by someone who is supposed to fit in with every other army boy, supposed to be just like every other clone here.
“Hey fag!” the same boy yells. “Stop giving out your terrorist money! We’re supposed to be—”
“Shut the hell up.” Liam snarls, “Shut up.”
“Who the hell are you?” He is barrel chested, this boy, with eyes set wide apart on his face and ugly, thin lips curled into something that is too hard hearted to be a smile, his American accent brash and slow, “His little fag boyfriend?”
“We’re supposed to be working together. This is a group mission.”
“Then you and the towel head can do your own thing while we go do actual work. Little fag fucker.”
At that, Zayn’s head perks up from where he has been bent, talking to the girl. He says something that looks a lot like a goodbye while Liam focuses on not hitting, not punching, not killing the ignorant man in front of him. He was pretty good at wrestling in school, thinks he could probably take the slow, bigger man in front of him no problem.
“Don’t talk to him that way,” Zayn strides up to them, “He doesn’t have anything to do with me, mate.”
“I am not your mate,” the boy seems offended by the suggestion.
“Fine.” Zayn says evenly, “but we can’t split up. That’s against orders.”
“Those same orders that told you to give money to a poor little prostitute on the street corner?”
“Why do you hate them so much?” Liam is trying to understand. He really is, but this kind of hatred doesn’t start and end in a war. This kind of hate boils and simmers and is tended, like a fire, then shaped, like something being put into the flame.
“They fucked us over. These fascist—”
“No!” Zayn’s cry is ripped from his throat. He throws down his gun, sprinting across the sand back to the little girl who is gazing, wide eyed and trusting, up at another man wearing the same fatigues as Zayn. This man, if the gun he has pressed to the back of her skull, is not the same as Zayn.
It all happens so quickly after that. Zayn is running and the man is shooting and the sound is echoing, sharp and chaotic, amongst the close walls of the ruins around them, and the girl is falling, blank eyed and ruby spilling from her head, and Zayn is cursing and running more quickly toward the man who shot her, and Liam is too far behind.
By the time he gets there, Zayn’s thin fingers are wrapped around the soldier’s throat, squeezing. His breathing is harsh, uneven, jagged, and Liam grabs him by the waist and hauls him back, trying not to hurt him. He is skinny, so, so skinny, more so than Liam could see, and he goes easily, but his hands won’t be moved.
“You stupid fucking wanker.” Zayn seethes, “You stupid, stupid ki—”
Liam’s fingers meet his, pulling them white knuckled and clenched as if he’s got no other lifeline, away from the man’s throat. He gulps air, greedy and glaring up at Zayn, as the other men rush over. They don’t even spare a glance at Zayn. Instead, they go to the man with blood on his hands, blood on his neck, and give him water, give him their eyes, and then turn to look at Zayn and Liam.
Zayn has moved from Liam’s grip, warm body off to the side, breathing too heavily.
“The captain will hear about this,” the ugly, mean one sneers. No one, it seems, is conscious of the silence around them. Together, as a clump of brash Americans, they move back toward the camp. One meets Zayn’s eyes before spitting on his boots.
In the heat of midday in the middle of an Afghani market place, they are left alone with the body of a small girl. Liam’s mind works in overtime: they have to tell someone, they have to find her parents, they have to get her to a safe place where her body won’t be cut open and the organs taken, they have to—
But Zayn is kneeling next to her. They’ve got the same colored skin, caramel and light and smooth. As Liam watches her eyes, unblinking, stare ahead until Zayn’s gentle fingers lower her lids. They’ve got the same eyelashes too: long like butterfly wings, curved out and black. Lastly, Zayn bends down and presses a kiss to her forehead. The way that he touches her, the gentle press of his fingertips along her wrist, Zayn has sisters, and Liam is disarmed by the knowledge.
He rises, doesn’t look at Liam, as they head back to the camp together. Maybe it’s just the recent events, but the walk has never taken so long, the desert has never been so hot. By the time they can see the tips of buildings, Liam’s got sweat beading down his back, and he feels like he needs to say something, needs to apologize, but Zayn beats him to it.
Murmuring, eyes directed at the ground, he whispers, “Thanks, mate, but I don’t need you to defend me.”
