Lover Dearest (Ziam Vampire AU)

Chapter 5

It's possibly the most tense dinner that Liam's ever had. The first thing Louis had done when he'd walked into the dining room to find Liam already at his seat was ask, "You actually let him eat at the table with you? How progressive."

Liam had bitten his tongue and dropped his gaze, telling himself not to get offended. Harry was the only other person in the room, at the time, and he was too busy gazing at Louis like a man seeing the sun after years of darkness, and he of course hadn't come to Liam's defence.

Things settled more when Niall came into the room, slouching into his usual seat, helping himself instantly to pasta from the nearest bowl. But whatever calm Niall brought with him washed out completely when Zayn came into the room and took the seat right next to Liam's, moving his chair closer so their elbows kept knocking together.

"I thought the pet belonged to all of us," Louis comments. "Isn't that the point of a blood-slave? Loyal to the whole clan, not a single member. You're looking a little possessive there, Zayn."

"We don't use that word," Harry scolds, coming back to the Harry Liam knows, not the one that's too busy adoring some strange vampire that sets everyone else on edge. "It's offensive."

"I'm sorry, pet," Louis says, not looking it at all as he smirks in Liam's direction.

"Don't call him that, either," Zayn snaps. "He's not a dog."

"What am I supposed to call him, then?" Louis demands. "Someone enlighten me."

Liam clears his throat. "Um, Liam. My name is Liam. You can— you can call me that."

"I can call you whatever I damn well please, actually," Louis says sweetly.

No one says anything to that, and Liam refuses to lift his gaze again. Zayn told him to be careful, and he has a feeling that expressing his current annoyance isn't exactly being careful, so he doesn't. Zayn scoops up a bit of pasta and plops it onto Liam's plate, shoving it closer to him, glaring at Louis the entire time he does it.

Liam and Niall are the only ones who eat. Louis spends the rest of the meal recounting his many adventures he had when he was gone, Harry's too busy listening raptly and nodding his head, and Zayn is like a statue beside him. A statue that twitches every time Louis so much as looks in Liam's direction.

"We should probably talk about this," Harry eventually says, as soon as one of Louis' stories has come to an end.

"Do we have to?" Niall asks. "I already had to stop you and Louis from killing each other today. I'd rather not try to get between him and Zayn. They both fight dirty."

Harry looks a little sheepish. "I already apologized for starting that fight," he says lowly. "I was upset that he'd left for so long and — I was irrational, and I apologized. And no one else is going to be fighting, understood?"

Liam isn't sure how it happened, how Harry became the leader of the clan. He's read so many books on it, but none of them are definite. Sometimes the leader is the vampire that bit the rest of the clan. Sometimes the leader is just the one who brought them all together. And sometimes the leader is unofficially elected because he's the most fitting for the job. No matter how it happened, though, Harry is unmistakeably the leader. He sits at the head of the table; the others fight with him, sure, but they tend not to go against his direct orders; and there's this look of respect in the other's eyes every time they look at him.

Because of that leadership, every single person at the table says, "Understood."

"Good." Harry looks at each of them, just to make sure. "Louis, I know you haven't been around for a while so you don't know how things go around here, but Liam isn't a blood-slave. He isn't a pet. He's a person."