Coalesce

FOURTEEN

As soon as Zayn pulls the car up against the snowy curb outside the cemetery, Louis is throwing the passenger door open and clambering out. He swallows down his panic and takes a breath, leaning back in to speak to the other man.

"Keep the engine running? If — if he's out here without a jacket, we're gonna need it warm in here," he says, heart thudding.

Zayn nods quickly. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. Go get our kid."

Louis doesn't need to be told twice. They'd had to drive painfully slow on the icy, blanketed roads, and the entire time his mind has been thinking up worst case scenarios — of Niall not being here but somewhere else, somewhere where they find him too late. He tries to ignore that thought as he rushes through the gates of the graveyard without a second thought and runs as fast as he can without slipping on the snow-covered path that leads through the tombstones.

He reaches the area he hasn't been to in a regrettable amount of time and pauses, eyes searching over the rows of stones before they land on the only one with a figure before it. He's too far to see well but it's enough for him. He runs, no longer caring about the snow and the ice and probably breaking every law of physics by not slipping and falling, but he gets to the grave in one piece.

Her grave. Anna's. It's covered entirely by white, flowers and soil hidden beneath, even the marble headstone dusted enough that the words engraved there are unreadable.

None of that matters to him in this moment though, because Niall is slumped against that iced over marble, in nothing but jeans and a sweater and his worn out trainers, legs curled into himself and arms wrapped around them tightly, not even shivering anymore.

"Ni," he breathes, voice cracking before he falls to his knees next to the boy, not even noticing the freeze that instantly seeps into his jeans. His attention is solely focused on his son, his child, whose eyes are wet and red as they look up at him, skin deathly pale and lips outlined with blue.

Louis feels as if the entire world has stopped spinning around him as he works with chill-stung fingers to unzip his winter jacket and shrug it off. The cold hits him instantly, shuddering, but he ignore it, draping the coat over Niall's shoulders and pulling it tightly around his front.

"Ni, buddy," he says again, looking down at the boy as he sniffles, finally reacting with a slow blink, blue tinged finger tips holding onto his fathers jacket and wrapping it tighter around himself.

"D-Dad," he whispers, then sobs wetly, eyes tearing up again. "Dad."

"Oh, Bug. I'm here. Dad's here," he whispers, heart about breaking at how young and broken his son looks in this moment. He pulls the boy towards him, into his chest, wrapping himself around his small body and rubbing his hands up and down his arm, his sides, his back, trying to warm him up.

"S-sorry," he whispers, and finally, thankfully, he begins to shiver. A jitter at first before his whole body wracks with shudders that leave him dithering in Louis' arms.

Louis shakes his head, blinking back his own tears of relief that he found his kid, dropping kiss after kiss into the boys hair. "Shh, none of that. You're okay. Lets get you to the car, hm? Lets get you warm," he murmurs, but Niall sobs and shakes his head, weakly trying to move away from him.

"No. N-no, want Mum. I wanna s-stay w-with Mum," he slurs, voice escaping him feebly through numbed lips.

The man's heart is shattering still in his very chest but he doesn't ease up on his hold of the boy. He grasps him tightly against his chest and shushes him, silent tears of his own dripping down his cheeks.