Sympathy for the Devil {Liam Stewart | The Darkest Minds}

8. Nymphs

After almost a year on the road, they finally catch a break. The 'Slip Kid's Camp becomes an actual, tangible goal, and a possible orange, too! Mags loves her friends, but none of them are 'kill on sight' on the psi-scale the way she is. If skip-tracers come after them, she's usually looking down the barrel of a gun, rather than being tased or detained, and they all call her the same thing after seeing her eyes; The Monster of Caledonia. Liam is usually able to knock them unconscious, because they don't want to do anyone serious damage with Zu around, but that also doesn't stop them from siphoning gas from their cars to fuel Betty. Lady Jane is the worst, calls Mags 'a pretty little hellhound' and unlike the others, she seems intent of capturing the girl and bringing her back to a camp for whatever reward is being offered for her; she hasn't succeeded thus far, and last time they came in contact, Mags melted her tires while she was out cold. The point is that Mags just wants to be able to talk to someone who might hold the same sort of experience as her, of being too powerful for their own good. They're all excited to find the camp.

Chubbs caught on to the fact that there was something between Mags and Liam about three days after the mall incident with the posters and her fainting, but by now, he'd walked into more intimate moments than he could count on all his fingers and toes and he just wanted to have people to complain to about it who weren't eleven.

Zu missed kids her age; she loved her little family but they spent their time scouting out locations and getting information and getting food, and she wanted to be able to relax and play with kids without fear of being caught by a skip-tracer whenever she went to the park.

And Liam? He just wanted his family to be safe. He wanted them to be able to eat three meals a day and sleep in real beds all the time, and to be safe and secure like they deserved to be.

So now they have a goal, and a general direction to head in, this ragtag bunch of misfits in their big, blue van.

"Mags," Liam stage whispers her name from the door of the hotel room they've been staying in for the past two days, grinning at her from where she's lying beside Zu and Chubbs, listening to the young man read a book out loud. The reading stops and all three look to the door, but Liam flushes. "I just, uh, wanted to talk to Mags." He cleared his throat sheepishly, but his expression brightened when Mags hopped off the bed and trotted over to him, even though Chubbs rolled his eyes and kept reading.

"You wanted to see me?" She closed the door behind herself, smiling coyly and looking up at him through her lashes. Liam's blush from earlier returned with a vengeance.

"Yes, I did." He said, offering his hand and pushing down every instinct that was yelling at him to just kiss her up against the door. "We know where we're going, so I thought we could celebrate." Mags took his hand, raising an eyebrow, but following as he walked out towards the carpark. There, alone, sat Betty, waiting for them. Once inside, Liam didn't drive far, just up a track in the forest by the hotel, up to a campsite by the edge of a cliff. Liam parked so the back of the van overlooked the cliff edge, and opened up the back of the van; he had dragged in a mattress from the hotel, and piled it high with pillows and blankets and doonas, as well as what seemed like a whole vending machine's worth of food.

However, once Mags turned away from that surprise, her breath was stolen by the view he had granted them. Stars glittered overhead, the backdrop to a waxing moon that shone down on them, glinting off of the ocean that the cliff overlooked. Sturdy metal railing lined the edge of the site, and Mags, full of incredulity, leaned against one, listening to the quiet rush of the ocean, before her gaze drifted up to look at the sky, so clear she felt like she was being swallowed by the cosmos.

"This is incredible." Mags felt her heart tighten, and then Liam was there, hands either side of hers on the railing, his chin resting on her shoulder. Mags turned, wide-eyed and almost speechless; they were nose to nose, and she cupped his jaw with her hands, resting her forehead against his. "You're incredible." In a flash, she pressed her lips to his, moving her hands to wrap her arms around his neck as he pressed her against the railing, kissing her like she was the ocean and he wanted to drown. Breaking away for just a moment, Mags hopped up to sit on the railing, wrapping her legs around his waist so he didn't need to be leaning down so far to kiss her. It was almost practiced at this point, one of his hands on her ass for stability as he kissed his way down the column of her throat. "Incredible." Mags sighs, and she feels him grin against her collar bone, before he raised his head, kissing her teasingly before pulling back just a little nose to nose, lips less than an inch apart.

"Incredible?" He asked, teasingly. Mags leaned in and kissed him, not giving the jab any traction. Her one of her hands reaches up to run her fingers through his hair, lips against his, deepening the kiss into something a bit messy and passionate.

"Did you eat a mint before this?" She leaned back, smiling at him with an amused adoration in her eyes. "What a gentleman." He grinned back, picking her up off the railing and walking them over to the van.

"Is it... incredible?" He asked, and Mags, in retaliation, moved to press her mouth to the juncture where his shoulders meet his neck, to suck a dark hickey into his skin. For his mocking quips, she allowed herself to heat up to just past comfortable, pressing her tongue to the bruised skin, before pulling away and pressing a quick kiss to the site.

"Yes, Liam, incredible." She humoured him, and he grinned back sitting her down gently in the back of Betty, letting her climb in and get comfortable before he followed. Taking a moment just as she was examining the snacks he brought, to look out at the railing and flick his wrist to send it careening over the edge of the cliff, giving them an uninterupted view of the ocean.

"You get a better view of the sunrise this way." He murmured. Something in Mags' chest tightened at that, an overwhelming love filled her at the realisation of how much he really cared about her, knew how much the sunrise meant to her since she had been imprisoned underground, and she surged forwards to where he was reclining, her hands on his chest as she moved to straddle him. Liam pulled back, laughing, as Mags moved to both kiss down his neck and chest, and remove her own shirt. "I was gonna say that I think I have a better view here anyways, but I think it's already getting better." He moved his hands across her soft, smooth stomach to hold her hips, fingers resting just above the dimples in her lower back that he adored. It had been so long since Caledonia, she wasn't all sharp and angular anymore, she was soft and curvy, warm, with dimples in her smile, and dimples only he was allowed to know about. Her hair was growing out, blonde straight from the roots, permanent damage from her imprisonment, but she didn't seem too worried about them.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Suddenly shy under his gaze, Mags blushed.

"Because I love you." He told her simply, and Mags laughed affectionately, leaning down to press a sweet, chaste kiss on his lips before leaning back up to unclip her bra. Liam leaned forward to press a kiss to the space just below her ribs, the spot always glowed, barely noticeable, even in the dark of night, but he had noticed it a few months back. It's where her fire and liquid metal was stored, and it was beautiful and fascinating; her fire, the fire that drove her and the literal fire inside her, all right there, the thing that had caused her to be punished, and the thing that had saved her little family, the thing that drove her. Mags' hands were warm on his cheeks as she brought his head back so she could look into his eyes, smiling with nothing but bliss and love.

"I love you too, thank you for this, it's... wonderful." She mused quietly, kissing him gently until he wrapped an arm around her and brought her down to deepen the kiss.

"It's going to get more wonderful." He assured her, voice husky as he moved them, rolling Mags onto her back so he was leaning over her, pulling off his own shirt with ease.

"Is that a promise?" She asked, wiggling her eyebrows and tracing a finger down his chest, the warmth of which had him shuddering, and he lowered down so he was close enough to almost kiss her, smirking.

"Oh definitely."