Ziam one shots

Zayn and the Grim Reaper

Part 2

"So now what?" Zayn asked, staring down at the smoking wreckage of their car. Inside, he knew, were their lifeless bodies, but he had no urge to look. How Liam even left behind a corpse, he had no idea.

But now the two of them were standing - well, floating - outside. Liam was back in his Reaper robe, though with the cowl pushed down, and he had his scythe in hand. He had discarded his elderly facade and was back to looking the way he did when Zayn had first met him. Zayn took a second to eye him appreciatively.

Zayn, though. He looked down at himself but where he was expecting to see the wrinkled hands of his 74-year-old self were instead the young and unwrinkled skin of his youth. He patted his face to check and no, there were no wrinkles there either. Then he realized that he was wearing a set of black robes just like Liam. He reached behind him and sure enough, he had a cowl attached to his as well. He looked at Liam, wide-eyed. "What's going on?"

"You're a Reaper now. Well, in training. That's why you don't have your own scythe yet. Gotta teach you how to use one," Liam said with a smirk.

"But -" Zayn's mind was flailing. He'd died. He'd thought he was going to the afterlife, whatever that was. "How did I become a Reaper?!"

"You married one."

"Well, yes, but -"

"Remember how I had wanted to change the vows from the standard ones? And how I had made us do a renewal every ten years?"

"Yes, with those purple flowers you said represented eternal love."

Liam nodded. "Heliotropes."

"And we said we'd be together in life and in death....Liam! Were you working magic all that time? Don't you remember what happened to Michael's mum? With the lightning and the dying and all that?!"

"There wasn't any risk of that. I am a Reaper, after all. But no, I wasn't, strictly, working magic. It's just that our vows may be more transcendent than some other people's. Sorry, are you mad? I just thought, you know, you asked me to marry you so that must have meant that you wanted to be with me for the rest of our lives. And my life is, well, eternal. I thought you knew that?"

"Well, yes, I figured. But I just, didn't want to think about it much. I guess I should have asked."

"Do you...want me to reverse it? I'm not sure how but I can try to find out." Liam looked a little downcast and Zayn wanted to kick himself. This was not how he wanted to start an afterlife with Liam.

He reached over and threaded their hands together - his left with Liam's right. He noted that he was still wearing his gold wedding band on his ring finger. Good. Then he hastily checked Liam's left hand where it was curled around the shaft of his scythe. His was there too. Zayn breathed out a sigh of relief. "No, no, you dolt. Don't you dare try to divorce us. I'm thrilled. Really. Just taken for a bit of a loop, that's all. I love you."

Liam squeezed his hand a little and smiled brightly at him. "Love you too, babe."

"Now teach me how to Reap," Zayn said. Liam laughed loudly and happily and the two of them glided off, hand in hand, into the moonlight.