Viva La Vida

Part 22

The sex they have is always marvelous, breathless, all-encompassing. They're obsessed with each other; Liam relishes the sounds he can pulls out of Zayn—tiny gasps and bitten-off groans—and Zayn can never stop himself from touching Liam; his hands know every inch of Liam's body as intimately as his own. Liam swears that heaven is just an eternity of the first moment of sinking into Zayn's entrance—that first moment where they're as close to each other as anyone can manage, where they're both speechless, adjusting to each other, shaking with the effort of holding back their pleasure. It's a moment that's as sacrilegious as it is fervent; Liam would like nothing better. They're still both full of the desperation of their first time together, but they do manage to make it to the bedroom most of the time these days.

Tonight is no different; Liam opened Zayn up with three fingers after receiving a mind-numbing blowjob for his trouble, and now is fucking into him as slowly as he can manage. Zayn is pliant and panting beneath him, thighs trembling and head thrown back. He's warm and tight around Liam, squeezing even tighter when Liam takes his cock in one hand and gives him a few strokes.

"F-fuck, Liam, be careful or I'll—"

Liam withdraws his hand and concentrates his attention on his thrusts instead. He's close too, but they haven't had the time and energy to do it properly for a bit, and he wants to make it last. Zayn whimpers as Liam grinds against his prostate, his hips bucking up to meet Liam's desperately and his cock pulsing out a pearl of precome.

"So fucking close, Li—" Zayn jerks his hips up again to meet Liam halfway and groans deliciously. His chest is heaving and his cheeks and neck are flushed; Liam's fairly sure this is what art looks like, what flying feels like.

"Come when you're ready, babe," Liam pants out, getting in two more deep, slow thrusts before he and Zayn come at almost exactly the same time. He pulls out and they collapse against each other in a messy pile of sweaty limbs and sheets.

Long after they've cleaned up and Zayn has fallen asleep, Liam is still awake, staring up at the ceiling like it could offer him advice. It's the most ridiculous and terrible thing to be thinking at midnight while he's lying in a warm bed next to his gorgeous boyfriend who just finished having sex with him, but—the tapes. His mind won't let the matter rest. They're eating away at his mind like worms through soft wood, and consequently his stomach is broiling with the worst anxiety he's felt in a long time. He now understands what Zayn means when he says he sometimes wakes up feeling like the world is ending; the world is ending, and Liam has the button that will start the apocalypse in the hard drive hidden in his closet.

He rolls out of bed. He stands up.

The hard drive is a tiny thing, but it's cold in his hand as he takes it out of the pocket where he'd stored it and pads to the bathroom, snagging his laptop from the table as he goes. It doesn't feel like something that will enable Liam to bear witness to a year and a half of hell, and yet—

His hands shake as he locks the bathroom and sits down on the floor with his back to the door. He turns on his computer. He plugs in the hard drive. He is not prepared for this, he knows that, but he can't let it hang over him any longer.

There's only one video in the hard drive's folder. He clicks it.

If Liam had been expecting to be met with terrors straight away, he is disappointed: the first shot shows a small cell that's lit by painfully bright fluorescent lights. The floor is concrete, punctuated with iron loops, and in the center of it, there's a slumped figure bound to a metal chair. The quality of the video is grainy—it's a security tape, after all—but the person it's undoubtedly Zayn—Zayn as Liam has not seen him in years, with his hair not yet shorn off and his body not yet emaciated. There's the date in the bottom corner of the screen; it's a day after Liam left him for dead in the rebel base. No horrors have yet been inflicted upon him.