Lover Dearest (Ziam Vampire AU)

Chapter 4

It's about two in the morning when Liam starts mopping the grand foyer. He's doing it because he wants to, not because he has to. If he doesn't, Harry'll end up doing it, and while Harry is a very good cleaner, it takes him three times as long as it does Liam because he's anal about getting every single inch of the floor completely spotless.

Liam has no idea where the others are. Last he'd seen, Niall was in the main living room, sleeping with his mouth hanging open and his limbs falling off the sofa. He hasn't seen Harry at all today, and he'd passed Zayn on the staircase a little while ago, but Zayn isn't talking to him, apparently.

Sighing, Liam dips the mop back in the bucket, just as the front doors open. The heavy wood bangs against the walls, cold, strong wind breezing into the room. Liam freezes, mop hovering over the bucket, eyes wide.

A man strides into the house, arms weighed down with luggage. He takes a single look around, chin tilted up in a way that could only be described as haughty, before dropping his bags to the floor. He easily shuts the door behind himself, blocking out the cool wind once again, and Liam is still too stunned to move.

There's this current in the air, like the electric wind of a stormy night, lightning ready to strike at any second. There's a thundering in Liam's ears to match it, his heart beating wildly. A pair of cold blue eyes meet his own, and the man who'd just stepped into their house regards him with the kind of smirk that is all teeth. All sharp teeth, that match his jaw and his eyes. Eyes that are slowly turning black by the second, icy blue melding seamlessly into black.

"Aren't you going to offer to take my bags, pet?" the man demands. Liam blinks at him. "Do you speak English?" He crosses the room in the blink of an eye, finger on Liam's chin, tilting it up much the way Zayn likes to do, only it's not a gentle sort of touch. He jerks Liam's chin up and up until it hurts. "Or are you instructed not to talk?"

"I- I can talk," Liam says, trying to lower his chin.

Liam doesn't trust himself to say much else. He's not stupid, and he's alone right now with a stranger. With a vampire stranger. Which means that, if he'd like to keep most of his blood in his body, and his life, he needs to just be still and quiet and pray that one of the others heard the doors opening.

"Mouth-watering," the man says. His teeth graze Liam's neck, and Liam can feel himself trembling but he doesn't try to push the guy away in fear of upsetting him. One wrong more and it could be his hands wrapped around Liam's neck instead. "I see why they decided to keep you around."

"Louis!"

The man releases him, taking a step back, and Liam stumbles back a bit, too, hand reaching up to wipe away the dampness of the man's breath from his neck. His legs are unsteady, and the mop slips from his fingers just as an arm goes around his waist. Zayn straightens him, makes sure he's not going to collapse, and then he easily moves so Liam's behind him, blocked almost completely by his body.

"So you actually came home, then," Zayn says. "How nice of you."

Liam blinks and Niall and Harry are suddenly in the room, Niall lounging lazily on the staircase. Harry strides past the three of them, shouldering Zayn out of the way a bit. "Louis," he says, soft and barely audible.

That sharp coldness disappears from the man's face, replaced by a blindingly sweet smile. "Harry."

And then Harry attacks him. Louis' head hits the ground, cracking the tile underneath it. Liam can't figure out who has the upper hand, because Louis slashes a gash into Harry's cheek while trying to get him off, and Harry tears at his chest and—