Maximum Damage (A Bad Romance AU)
Fandom: The Royal Romance
Pairings: Riley x Liam, Liam x Max, Riley x Max, Riley x Drake (Past)
Rating: MA and NSFW. There are🍋’s but that’s not the main issue, please read the trigger warnings before deciding if you want to read this.
Warnings for this chapter: Major character deaths, graphic description, traumatic birth, premature birth, car accident, suicide, emotional trauma.
A/N: I have never posted a chapter or a one-shot this long. I generally break chapters in two if they get close to 5k words. One-shots turn into two or three-shots or whole ass miniseries, but it just felt wrong to split this one. I didn’t want anyone waiting for the next installment, I feel like the emotional impact is stronger if it’s read all at once. And I apologize for what @21wishes has referred to as the emotional carnage I have unleashed here. This isn’t where I expected this story to go when I started it, but stories sometimes take on a life of their own and trust me, I broke my own heart along the way. There are no happy endings here, so please proceed with caution.
Special shoutout to @karahalloway @dcbbw @harleybeaumont @21wishes for doing one or more of the following: prereading snippets, bouncing ideas with me, listening to me rant about this, giving general emotional support for my self inflicted trauma and mostly for not blocking and deleting me for this fic.
“What is it?” Max rounded the corner, out of breath, “I got here as fast as I could!”
Max was brought up short by the sight in the front of him and the sounds issuing from the bedroom. Liam was sitting on the couch in the living room of his private quarters, head clutched in his hands, fingers tearing at his hair. When he lifted his eyes, they were red rimmed, his usually perfectly pressed shirt was rumpled, his tie was hanging loosely around his neck, his hair, generally perfectly coiffed, was in disarray. He looked like he’d been on a three day bender, but he’d been perfectly fine that morning.
As bad as the sight of distressed Liam was, the sounds issuing from the bedroom were worse. Shrill wailing, a sound like a wounded, and dying, animal pierced the air. Max’s heart leapt in panic, “What’s wrong? What happened?”