The Gifts -Narry & Ziam- (AU) *Completed*

Chapter 5; Day Two

Chapter 5 ; Day Two

When they woke up the lights were still off. Louis woke up first, and shouted out in surprise a little, because the darkness was just that thick and frightening. It pressed into his chest, strangling him, and all he could do was sit up in bed and try to breath in deeply, fighting down a wave of panic that threatened to overwhelm him. He sat in silence or a long while, his eyes greeted with the sort of darkness one would find when closing their eyes. Dense and veiling.

Finally, when he could take it no more, about ten minutes he called out, “Lads? I’m scared.” His voice quivered and he heard the creek of someone below him shifting about in bed.

“Do any of you happen to have the power of light?” Niall demanded, somewhere in front of Louis, his voice drifting funnily in the room. It sounded distorted, without his sarcastic smirk and too everything blue eyes to accompany his, snapping like snakes, words. It was odd and strangely frightening. A snippet of laughter floated through the air.

“No, I don’t reckon so,” Someone, Liam, said, giggling quietly. His voice was coming from directly below him., groggy and humorous. For a second Louis wanted to laugh too, in then he stuck his hands in front of his eyes and squealed.

“Yes! Yes! My hands glow!” He swallowed a few times, “But they aren’t right now, and I can’t control them.” So everyone sunk back into a silence, and they heard Zayn’s breathy sighs as he woke up to another nightmare.

“I can sing,” Harry randomly said after a few grueling minutes of nothing but blackness to entertain them.

“Really?” Zayn sounded slightly desperate, “Do it.” Harry took  few calming breaths and felt Niall’s thigh against his, and his hand on the patch of skin above his heart and below his collar bone, and lying on his back he began to sing.

“Isn’t’ she lovely? Isn’t she wonderful? Isn’t she precious? Less than one minute old, and I never thought, through love we’d be, making one as lovely as she, so isn’t she lovely, made from love?” It was funny Harry sung a song by a blind man when they were basked in blackness. For a second everyone sat. In then Liam broke the silence.

“I can sing too,” So all the boys took a round-a-bout turn, singing out loud into the darkness and receiving compliments. Niall had not spoken throughout this entire time, but to pass out a single punctual comment about each boys singing voice. The tension was thick in the room.

“What about you, Niall? Can you sing as well?” Zayn asked, loosening the tight roll of his wings and allowing them to breathe a little in the pressing darkness. Niall didn’t answer at first, and they sat in silence for so long everyone began to wonder if maybe the blonde had been tripped up in his own mind.

“I dunno,” Niall said, and Harry felt rather than saw the careless, tense motion of him shrugging his narrow shoulders, “Singing never seemed important and my pa said it was for poof’s. So I didn’t, and I guess I just sort-a carried that silence with me through my years.” Niall sounded wise, like he always sounded, in the darkness.

“Well, mate, just try. It passes time.” Louis advised, sinking against the beds back frame and curling his knees up to his chest, desperate to know that he was still real, desperate to feel something right and safe in the darkness of the room.

“I wouldn’t even know what to sing,” Niall said, throwing the idea off and sinking further into the curve of Harry’s side. The younger boy placed an arm on Niall’s shoulders, holding him close. Everyone felt the need to touch something, because how could anything, anything at all be real when you could only hear it, not see it?

Louis refused to drop the matter and tucked his legs underneath him, “Just sing a tune from the radio, lad, it’s not rocket science.” Louis shuffled and shifted around atop his bed, holding a portion of his blanket to his chin and holding it tightly.

“You know what? Fine. I warned you,” Niall says opening his mouth and bursting into a fit of dramatic giggles, knotting his hands nervously in his lap and toying with the hem of his collar, “Ummm…” Harry felt his heart leap in his chest, weirded out by the thought of Niall being insecure and out of control. “Okay let’s go. Er… Ah, Okay, let’s go.” Niall was giving himself a locker room pep talk and his breath busted out from behind his lips.

“I’m so sick of love songs, so tired of tears. So done with wishing, you were still here,-“ Nothing else mattered in the world. No one could hear Niall singing any longer. Swathed in warmth, the kind you get when exiting a cold pool and standing in the hot sun, your first drink of something cold on a blazing day, was consuming the boys. Niall had never sing in front of another person, and adrenaline shot through Zayn’s vein like a shot of cold water, pumping up his brain and jacking up his heart rate. The boys were tingly, and shaking, and frightened and hopeful and ready all at once and the sensation was like looking into Niall’s eyes times a million. It was like kissing your girlfriend, extending your wings, it was anything and everything wonderful and horrible all rolled up and forced upon the boys like an ugly Christmas sweater.

When it was over, Niall just sat uncomfortably, basked in the sound of their heavy breathing and occasional pant and whimper of longing and loss and something else a little more palpable. “Okay, I know I suck I’m sorry-“ Niall began but Harry shifted his hand and covered the boys mouth and tried to recover what sensibility he had left.

“What the hell….” Zayn panted... “Are you?” His voice quirked up and he felt the nonexistent air beneath his wings and the freedom bursting through his lungs and making his heart soar like a cloud.

“A siren,” Niall stated, his voice frightening and disconnected in the darkness of the room, “I am a siren.” In then Niall shifted out of Harry’s grip, and his hand brushed the back of his neck.

Niall gasped loudly. He shifted onto his knees, gripping Harry’s neck and feeling the space right below his hair line with his index finger.

“Oh my god, it’s a needle mark. Harry, you’ve been stuck with a needle on the back of your neck!" For a second a chill had fallen and the boys rubbed the skin on the back of their necks and searched for a wound. Niall found his own, and so did the other boys, and no one spoke because they weren’t quite sure what to say to each other.

“They’ve taken blood, or they’ve injected us with something.” In then the padded door swung open, and a metallic cling rang out as something was thrown onto the ground and the wall creaked shut again. Harry recognized the smell of the gas immediately, and opened his mouth to shout warnings as Niall went limp in his arms and slid down to the floor.

“Cover your mo-“ But he couldn’t continue because white light was popping behind his eye lids and his chest was being pushed on by a body builder and everything went black as the noxious fumes curled in the air.