Stand By Me ~Zouis Family

Ten

 Life in the Tomlinson-Malik’s household had been fairly peaceful over the past month, Zayn had acquired a job in a small yet busy little art shop. He worked in store, selling supplies to customers and sometimes, when he was needed, he was allowed to go out and paint murals on buildings and whatnot... He was loving it.

Zayn had even made a few friends in this new town; there was Paul, a man in his early thirties who had just started a new business and needed someone help design a funky logo for him. Zayn had been working for only four days and Paul was his first ‘on-call’ customer that he’d been sent too and the pair shared quite a few common interests.

The other was Dave, Dave was only a year older than Zayn and he worked in the shop with him, the two had become rather close, finding they had more in common than either thought they would. 

All in all, their lives seemed to be panning out better than they ever expected.

“Daddy, we can dance?” Liam questioned jumping off the couch and running into the dining room where Louis was sat at the table helping Niall with his homework.

“You can dance, me and Niall are busy at the moment.” Louis replied, he reached behind him and switched the stereo on, some eighties rock song immediately filling the otherwise silent home.

Liam let out a whine of protest, not wanting to dance alone but never the less he began to shake his little bum half heartedly to the music.

“C’mon Li, I know you can do better than that.” Niall encouraged his baby brother.

And Liam’s face almost immediately regained his usual happy smile because his big brother wanted to see him dance, and he wanted to show off so he began to stomp his feet and jump around, spinning around on his toes on the wooden floor; not the most rhythmic dancing, but still very cute. And soon Niall, despite his father’s protests, had gotten up and begun to dance around the table as well.

“C’mon Dad, it’s fun!” Niall called tugging on his father’s hand and attempting to pull him to his feet.

Louis hesitated, he was debating taking on the role of ‘strict dad’ because Niall had told him this morning that he was simply too sick to attend school with big teary eyes; Louis had known he was faking, but Niall was just so hard to say no to and yeah, Louis knew that it was wrong, he knew not being able to tell his son no was down right bad parenting but Louis just wasn’t in the mood for tears. So reluctantly he dragged his body from the wooden seat and began to dance like a fool around the house with his two youngest sons for a good half hour until they’d all tired themselves out and flopped down onto the couch.

“Take Rusty for walking!” Liam exclaimed after only a minute of relaxing, he slid off the couch and tugged on his father’s arm.

“Liam-” Louis began to protest, he wanted to tell him no, that everyone was too tired and Harry would be home soon and he needed to cook dinner and he needed to do the washing and the bathrooms needed cleaning, the carpet needed vacuuming, the grocery shopping hadn’t been done and the windows were covered in small sticky hand prints and culprit was standing right in front of him. But as he thought over all the jobs he had to do, the more worn out he felt because Zayn barely did anything, Harry only helped out when he needed money and Louis was still trying to tell himself that at seven, Niall was still too young. “Go and get the lead for me please.”

Liam let out a small squeal of delight and ran as fast as short little legs would allow. Louis pushed himself into a more appropriate sitting position and dug his phone out of his pocket, deciding he’d flick his husband a text,

Taking the dog for a walk with the kids... You can cook tonight x

Liam came back a few moments later, the dog lead in one hand and his light-up Buzz Light-Year shoes in the other. Niall climbed off the couch and made his way to his bedroom to dress while Louis tried to still the over excited dog long enough for him to attach the lead to his collar.