Stand By Me

Chapter Eleven

Zayn parks out front of the high school where their boys — their three boys — spend five days a week, waiting for the final five minutes before the last class ends so he can drive them all home. It's raining, a constant stream of relaxing 'taptaptap' against the windshield replacing the usual sound of the radio as he slouches in the drivers seat, half-zoned out.

The past few days have been...easier. Niall returned to school after the first weekend of living with them, and now they're on Wednesday so it's day three of Zayn having the house to himself for hours longer than he has had since he'd married Louis. And it's driving him crazy.

He calls his husband every chance he gets, to the point where the other man has reprimanded him like a child on several occasions and told him to 'just watch the TV or something', and he all but counts down the minutes until he can get in the car and pick up the kids from school. He's come close to calling his boss on several occasions and telling her he's available to return, but he quickly reminds himself that he's taking time off for a reason — he knows it's only a matter of time before everything catches up with Niall and the kid might need him there at any point in the day, being at work would make that difficult.

Because Niall has been coping almost too well recently; almost as if he's pretending that everything is fine. Zayn's no psychologist but he knows that isn't the right way to deal with things. He knows it'll only make it hit harder in the end.

Besides, the twelve year old isn't all that difficult to read; the worry is a constant resident in his features, the drawn together brows, the lips that are chapped from chewing them anxiously. And now that the bruises are fading, the bags beneath his eyes are only becoming more visible.

Zayn likes to think he's an intuitive person, especially when it comes to his kids — with Harry, he can always tell the moment his anxiety even begins to think about showing up, and when it gets bad, he usually knows exactly what to do to help it feel better; and with Liam's teenage mood swings, he's good at not overstepping and making it worse by saying or doing the wrong thing, he mostly does what he can to prevent the kid from exploding on them all. But with Niall's current position, it doesn't take intuition, it's just common sense.

The kid's stepfather has just been thrown in jail for a decade after spending years abusing him, and his mother has gone entirely AWOL, essentially abandoning him. Now he's been forced to leave behind the place that he's lived for his entire life and everything has changed, even if it is for the best. Zayn knows that that's a lot for anyone to deal with, but for someone of Niall's age? Well, they shouldn't be so calm and collected about it all, he's sure. There should be more than just a few signs of half-hidden anxiety to show for what's going on inside that head of his.

He jumps slightly as sudden chatter floods the atmosphere, muffled by the closed windows of the car and the rain that only continues to grow heavier — since the first storm the previous week, the weather has only continued to deteriorate from glorious summer sunshine to the first rainfalls of autumn.

The entrance doors are propped open now, a steady stream of students flowing out, all in matching uniforms, some with coats and others with their school blazers or rucksacks held over their heads, some walking as if they aren't being soaked and others running and screaming as if it's an apocalypse and not just a storm.

He lowers his own window in order to scour the crowds for his own boys, smiling and lifting a hand when he spots the two younger boys heading down the pathway to the car park; Harry with a folder held above his head, curls damp and lips curled up into a laugh as Niall walks alongside him, the smaller boy grinning too at something that's apparently been said, his own hair turning dark with saturation.

"Hey Papa!" Harry yells as soon as they reach the car, wasting no time in opening the back door and chucking all of his belongings in before climbing up into the far seat.