A week later, they are out on night watch. The past week had been busy. There was an attack on the camp, supplies were stolen, and Zayn spent a ton of time being accused, being questioned. Liam feels a bit like he spent the entire week bristling, pissed off, anxious that Zayn would crack and succumb to all of the horrible things that people were saying about him. They haven’t had time to talk about what happened between them, and he might be imagining it, but the air feels charged with the knowledge of what happened, of their kiss.
“Your brain is making noise,” is what breaks the silence between them.
Liam, in the darkened night, takes his eyes off of the city that glistens so warmly in the distance. Across all of the blue sand, there are people whose lives don’t revolve around the reality of war. Who haven’t had to develop a sixth sense linking them to the people that they love to survive. He wishes that he’d met Zayn at a different time, in a different place so acutely in that moment that it burns.
“Liam?”
His eyes flicker up to meet Zayn’s, and he hopes that the other boy can’t see what he’s thinking. “I wish we’d met in a different place.”
“What?”
“I wish we’d met at uni or something. Not here.” Liam’s worried that Zayn is going to ask questions about what he’s saying, about why he’s saying anything at all, but the other boy is nodding.
Zayn smiles softly, “I’m, like. I’m not sure I would’ve been brave enough to go after you in the real world.”
“The real world?” Liam’s eyes narrow in confusion.
“You know. The war makes everything feel, like, more urgent, yeah? Like, if you don’t do it now, you can’t.”
Liam’s heart drops, “If you’re trying to tell me that you wouldn’t’ve kissed me if we weren’t in a war—”
Zayn’s hand comes up to Liam’s face. He looks rueful or wistful or some other big word that Liam can’t remember from English class with his wide, glistening, honest eyes and his pink lips and those eyelashes that shutter down to brush his cheeks. “You wouldn’t’ve let me kiss you if we weren’t in this war.”
“I would,” Liam says. Maybe he should be afraid of how quickly he’s giving his heart away to this person who he hardly knows, but it’s so hard not to feel close to him. He doesn’t know much real world stuff about Zayn, couldn’t tell anyone his favorite color or movie or music, doesn’t even know his birthday but could learn it if he reached out and grabbed the dog tags glinting out of Zayn’s shirt, but he does know the important things. That Zayn is compassionate and good with kids. He doesn’t rise to insults or bow down under the force of the war. Zayn is strong. “I think I’d always’ve let you kiss me.”
“Really?” Zayn’s eyes are smiling and wide, soft, “So you like me, yeah?”
Liam rolls his eyes, fighting against the goofy grin threatening to break out across his face. “You like me?” His hands find Zayn’s skinny waist and settle over the jut of his hipbones.
“A bit, yeah.”
“I like you a bit too.”
--
It’s not dating. There is no way to see someone normally during a war. What it is is moments stolen out of their normal days. Zayn pressing him against the wall behind the cafeteria, like middle school, his lips demanding on Liam’s. Liam waiting up for Zayn to come home from a long day out of duty and yanking him into an embrace, smelling the foreign county on him. Zayn whispering things about his family while they rest against each other under the stars, something soft in his eyes while he talks about Safaa and Waliyah and Trisha, how beautiful they all are. Liam’s tremulous laughter as he recounts the various stupid things he did in college, the absolute horror his mom felt upon his rejection from uni, his final decision to join up.
Sometimes, they play a silly, wistful, stupid game. It’s always in the dark when Liam can’t see the glittering of Zayn’s eyes, can’t read the bittersweet in his smile, Zayn resting in the triangle of his legs. They talk about what dates they’ll go on, back in the UK. The cinema and a fancy restaurant and dancing, because Liam has seen the way that Zayn rolls his hips, and to a footy field, because Zayn wants to see Liam in thosetight little kits, babe. When one of them has had a particularly bad day, they play this game. Some days, it helps, makes Liam feel more normal. Other times, Liam wants to go into the city and find the people who started all of this and strangle them. It’s hard to fall for someone when you spend every second worried they’re going to die.
