pick it all up, pick it all up (and start again). | part three (b)
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Two days after they bury her mum, Greg drives Zayn and Niall to the airport. Harry, Louis, and Liam had left the day prior, wanting to give Niall some space and needing to get back to prepare for their exams.
“You ready, babe?” Zayn asks, squeezing Niall’s hand where it rests in his when a voice comes
over the loudspeaker and announces that their flight is now boarding.
“Yeah,” Niall responds, taking a steadying breath. She drops Zayn’s hand then and throws herself into her brother’s arms, holding him tight around the waist and burying her face in his chest.
“Gonna miss you, Ni,” Greg murmurs against Niall’s hair. He pulls back then, his hands on Niall’s shoulders as he looks down at her. “Call me, yeah? Let me know you’re okay.”
Niall nods, and Greg smiles and leans in to drop a kiss to her forehead. “Here,” he says pulling an envelope from his jacket pocket. He holds in in between them, and Niall can see her name written in her mum’s handwriting across the front, small and neat and not much unlike her own. “She wanted me to give you this.”
Niall’s hands shake as she takes the envelope from Greg, and she’s embarrassed to realize that her eyes have welled up, tears burning hot and nose stinging. “Thank you, Greg,” she speaks quietly, her voice thick, and she wraps Greg up in another hug. “Thank you.”
With final hugs and kisses (and Greg whispering a “take care of my sister, please” into Zayn’s ear), Niall and Zayn board their plane. Niall sits silently for the entire flight, her head rested on Zayn’s shoulder as she looks down at the envelope in her hands. She doesn’t open it,not yet, just worries the corner of it with her fingers, traces over the ink that spells out her name in the handwriting she’ll never see again.)
They get home late that night, and Zayn yawns as he drops their bags by the front door. He very nearly cries when he walks into the kitchen and sees that their friends have gone grocery shopping for them, stocking their cabinets so that they won’t have to.
“Liam even did the dishes, bless,” Zayn says as he pulls a glass from the cabinet, filling in with water and taking a long drink.
“What did we do to deserve friends like them?” Niall asks from where she’s propped against the doorway of the kitchen. She pads across the kitchen to where Zayn is standing, edge of the countertop digging into the small of his back, and steps in between his legs, wrapping her arms around his middle and resting her chin on his chest, looking up at him. “What’d I do to deserve a guy like you?”
“Oh, Ni,” Zayn says, reaching up to cup Niall’s cheek in his palm. He starts to tell her it’s the complete opposite, that he wonders on a daily basis what strings the universe had to pull to get him her, but Niall just sighs and presses up on her tip-toes, cutting him off with a soft kiss.
“C’mon,” she speaks, voice quiet. “Let’s go to bed, yeah?”
---
Somehow, Niall makes it through all of her exams and passes all of her courses, despite the fact that she’s completely drained.
It’s almost as though the exams were what was keeping her going, because as soon as she takes her last final, she collapses in Zayn’s bed and just sleeps.
She sleeps- and sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps- for days, only getting out of bed to use the bathroom and follow Zayn when he leads her into the kitchen and sits her down at the table while he makes her something to eat.
Zayn knows she’s hiding in her dreams, sleeping to avoid reality, and he knows it can’t be healthy, that it can’t be good for her to just avoid everything, but the only time she doesn’t look like she’s seconds away from breaking into a million pieces is when she’s asleep and so he lets her be, slides into bed beside her and holds her close.
On day five- six?- of Christmas hols, Niall blinks wide awake at three in the morning. The sheets are itchy against her skin and Zayn’s arm is heavy at her waist and the moon is shining brightly through the window and she just can’t get comfortable, tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep.
She gives up after an hour, sliding out of bed and walking into the kitchen, flipping on the light and looking around the room.
When Zayn wakes, the sun is barely above the horizon and Niall’s side of the bed is cold.
“Ni?” He calls, slipping out of bed. He pokes his head in the bathroom and down the hall, and his brow furrows when he sees the light from the kitchen flooding into the hallway. “Babe?”
He stops short when he gets to the kitchen and finds Niall standing on top of the kitchen counter, hair thrown up haphazardly and elbows deep in the cabinets, balanced on her tip toes as she scrubs the back of the cupboards. The contents of said cupboards are spread all over the kitchen- pots and pans litter the kitchen counter and the kitchen table is covered with food from the pantry- “What the hell?” Zayn can’t help but wonder out loud, and Niall jumps at the sound, hitting her head on the top of the cabinet. She curses under her breath and turns to look at him, eyes wide and hand at her chest as she tries to catch her breath. Zayn hurries across the kitchen, already spouting apologies as he walks over to Niall, arms extended. He helps her down from the counter with his hands at her hips, murmuring another “sorry” as he pulls her into his arms.
“What are you doing up so early?” Zayn asks after a moment, lips pressed to Niall’s forehead.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Niall explains, shrugging. “So I decided to clean out the cabinets.”
“Oh,” Zayn says. He pushes a stray hair behind Niall’s ear and nods, disentangling their limbs and stepping to where he knows the coffee maker is hidden behind a wall of Tupperware. He uncovers it and plugs it in, reaching blindly to the left to find the container of Folgers. Once the pot starts brewing, he turns to look at Niall, who has started putting the food back into the now freshly scrubbed clean pantry. There’s a rag tugged into the back of the waistband of her pajama bottoms and a smear of dirt- dust? He really should clean more often- just above her right eyebrow. “How can I help?”
Niall turns to look at him, giving him a small, appreciative smile, before reaching back and pulling the rag from her waistband and tossing it to him, pointing him towards the cabinets below the sink. Zayn nods and gets to work, and that’s how they spend their morning- scrubbing every inch of the kitchen clean and reorganizing the cupboards.
(It’s how they the next couple of weeks pass, actually- it’s like a switch has flipped in Niall, and she can’t sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. She’s antsy, fidgeting and itchy in her skin, and Zayn soon gets used to waking up to her side of the bed being cold and some part of his apartment rearranged. They spend the first half of their Christmas holiday holed up and avoiding reality- Zayn knows Niall isn’t ready to go back out yet, can’t yet face a world where she knows her mum isn’t. He can see it in the way she turns her phone over when her screen lights up with a call from Louis, in the way she doesn’t go anywhere near her computer and the way she doesn’t answer Harry’s texts.)
One morning, Zayn wakes up and Niall is on her stomach on the floor in the hallway, painting the baseboards. She’s wearing one of his old painting shirts, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
“What’re you-“
“Baseboards were lookin’ a bit grungy. I wiped them down and that sort of helped, but I figured they could use a fresh coat of paint, yeah? I found this in the closet by the front door- which, by the way, has a lot of stuff in it, did you know? I’ll probably tackle that next.”
Zayn crouches down next to Niall and runs his hand over the small of her back where the worn and frayed hem of his shirt is rucked up. “Hey, c’mere?”
Niall pushes herself up, shifting onto her knees and sitting back on her heels. “Yeah?” She asks, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead.
“C’mon,” is all Zayn offers, standing and extending a hand to her. He can tell that she needs to get out of the house, is starting to get cabin fever but is too apprehensive to actually go, and so Zayn makes the decision for her. “Let’s go on a walk.”
“I-“ Niall starts, but Zayn simply takes her hand in his and tugs her up gently. “Yeah. Okay.”
They bundle up, grabbing their coats and scarves from the front closet- which, Niall was right, it has a ton of shit in it- and pulling on their boots before heading outside.
They walk- and walk, and walk, and walk- in silence, hands swinging in between them as they trudge through the snow. They stop on top of a hill in the middle of a park (neither of them are sure exactly where they are, really), and Zayn wraps an arm around Niall’s shoulders when she leans into his side, pressing in close.
“Pretty, innit?” Zayn breathes, taking in the bright white of the snow blanketing the park, only interrupted by the two sets of footprints leading from the entrance up to the top of the hill.
“Yeah,” Niall responds, tilting her head against Zayn’s shoulder. Zayn looks down at her face, takes in the brightness of her cheeks, pink and flushed from the cold, biting wind, and the circles beneath her eyes, bigger and darker than ever before.
“You’re gonna get through this, Ni,” Zayn whispers, ducking to press his lips against Niall’s forehead in a soft kiss. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you are.”
Niall’s eyes water at his words, and she purses her lips, trying to keep the tears from spilling over. One does, though, and Zayn ducks his head lower to kiss it away as it rolls down her cheek before he pulls her into a hug, holding her to him tight.
It’s like she’s finally letting herself encounter all of the feelings she’s been dealing with since the funeral- the sadness and the pain and the grief that she’s been holding in since they got on the plane home all come to a head at once and she finally lets it all go, body wracked with sobs as Zayn holds her in his arms.
“You’re okay,” Zayn murmurs, lips pressed to her hair, rocking her as she cries. “You’re gonna be okay, love.”
Eventually, her crying subsides, and she laughs wetly, forehead pressed to Zayn’s collarbone. “Well, I’m officially that person from the movies,” she says, voice gravelly from crying. “Crying in the park, what the hell.”
Zayn chuckles, lips still pressed to the top of her head, before running his hands up and down the tops of Niall’s arms. “C’mon, let’s get something to eat, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Niall agrees, leaning back and pushing up to kiss Zayn quickly, softly. She knocks her forehead against his chin lightly before stepping back completely, reaching down to take his hand and tangle their fingers together.
They find a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant that’s just opened for the day, and Zayn is relieved to see that not only is it not very crowded, it’s not overloaded with Christmas decorations, either.
(Niall hasn’t really been too into the Christmas spirit this time around, and if he’s honest, he hasn’t been, either.)
Niall picks at her food when it’s brought to their table, her appetite nonexistent, and it’s something Zayn is used to seeing after the past few months- but this morning it strikes him suddenly as one of the most sad things about it. Niall- his Niall- who always ran at life head on, who jumped in without hesitation and who defied every single stereotype she ever encountered, is sitting across from him, legs crossed under her as she pushes her food around her plate, unable to enjoy it, pale and small and so, so fragile.
“Eat something, Ni,” Zayn coaxes gently, and it’s such a familiar routine by now- he reminds her that the food on her plate is edible and that she needs to eat something, and then she looks up and smiles at him, small and sad, before taking a few bites of whatever is on her plate.
When they get back to the flat, cheeks red and noses numb, there’s a familiar car parked outside by the curb.
“Stop breaking and entering into my apartment, I swear to God,” Zayn calls when they trudge back up the stairs and walk inside.
“Sorry-” they hear Louis’ voice call back from the kitchen. “No, sorry, actually, I take that back. I’m not sorry. I wanted to see you two before I leave with mum and the girls for Gramps’ house, goddammit, and I am most definitely not sorry.”
Niall and Zayn have reached the kitchen then, and they find Louis sitting atop the counter, arms crossed and pouting petulantly at them. Harry is sitting at the table and Liam is pacing the length of the kitchen nervously, and Niall visibly tenses when she sees them all.
Liam sees her tense up and immediately opens his mouth to apologize, stopping still in his tracks. “I’m sorry, I tried to stop her, I told her we should have called- oof.”
He’s cut off when Niall all but flings herself at him, closing the distance between them in three long strides and hugging her arms around his shoulders tight, her face buried in his neck. After a second, the shock wears off, and Liam settles into the hug, wrapping his arms around her waist and hugging her back.
It doesn’t take long for Liam to realize that Niall is crying, the collar of his shirt wet against his neck where her tears are soaking through it. “Ni, don’t cry,” he says, rubbing a hand across her back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think-”
“No, no,” Niall says after a minute, and when she pulls back to look up at him, there’s a smile on her face. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Yeah?” Liam asks, and Niall nods, tears- happy ones, at that- still streaming down her cheeks, because she is happy they’re there. and throws herself at him again, this time squeezing her arms around his middle and tucking her head under his chin.
“Hey, I want a hug,” Louis pipes up from the countertop. “I am the one who broke us in here, after all- I missed my Ni too, y’know.”
Niall lets Liam go and smiles when she sets her sights on Louis, who has her arms extended and is making grabby hands at her. She walks over to Louis and steps into her arms, laughing when Louis no only wraps her arms around her, but her legs, too, squeezing Niall tight with her entire body.
“Fuckin’ koala,” Niall mutters, voice muffled where she’s got a mouthful of Louis’ shoulder. “Geroff me.”
“Never!” Louis responds, but pulls back just enough so that she can reach up and smoosh Niall’s cheeks in her hands. “Don’t ever do that again, y’hear?”
Niall nods, leaning up and pressing her forehead to Louis’, and when she speaks, it’s just a whisper. “I won’t, Lou. Missed you.”
“Same, babe,” Louis murmurs. After a second, she releases Niall from her grip, pushing her lightly towards where Harry is standing, waiting not so patiently for his turn. “Not as much as this fool, though- thought he was going into withdrawal or something without you.”
Harry all but throws himself at her, bent nearly double over her smaller frame as he hugs her, long limbs wrapped around her body and holding her close. “New rule,” he whispers, and it tickles where his lips brush her ear. “You have to answer at least three out of every fifteen text messages I send you, kapeesh? Even if it’s just a “yeah” or a “k” or a “fuck you, leave me alone.””
Niall snorts at that, fingers pulling at the material of the t-shirt Harry’s wearing as he hugs her.
(And hugs her, and hugs her, and hugs her some more, only letting go-reluctantly, at that- when Louis reminds him that he’s supposed to be in a car with his mum and Robin already, heading to his aunt and uncle’s to spend Christmas with all of his cousins.)
When they’ve all exchanged another round of hugs and Liam, Louis, and Harry have all left, Niall walks into the living room and collapses on the couch. It’s only ten in the morning, but she’s exhausted- physically and emotionally- from long days of no sleep and from finally facing everything she’d been keeping buried for weeks.
She shifts down the length of the couch, laying on her back and opening her arms to Zayn when he walks into the room; he catches on immediately, climbing carefully on top of her and laying down, his body a familiar, reassuring weight over hers.
“Thanks, Z,” she murmurs after a moment, arms wrapped around his shoulders and fingers scratching absently through the short hairs as the base of his skull, and Zayn knows without her saying it that’s she’s talking about how he got her out of the house, pulled her outside and helped her get one small step closer to facing the world, bringing her closer and closer to facing everything she’s kept pent up since her mum had died.
---
Christmas is spent with the Maliks, and although Niall isn’t very excited about it- it’s the first Christmas she won’t be spending with her mum, after all, won’t be spending it making eggnog and watching ridiculously cheesy Christmas movies with her head in her mum’s lap while she cards her fingers through her hair- she plasters a smile on her face and tries her best to fake her way through it. She doesn’t want to ruin Christmas for Zayn’s family, after all, especially not for his younger sisters, and so she tries her hardest to keep up her spirits while they’re there, laughing when everyone else does and doing her best to participate in the conversations going on around her.
Zayn sees her though, sees right through her act and reminds her that he’s there with a warm hand on her knee at the dinner table or a quick press of his lips to her temple while they’re playing board games, whispering into her ear when she zones out and misses the question on her turn.
On Christmas morning, Niall follows Zayn downstairs, accepting the coffee he hands her with a grateful smile and curling up beside him on the couch to watch as the Present Opening begins. His dad orchestrates, making the girls giggle as he hands the presents out one by one, and it’s nice to see a family together on Christmas, Niall thinks to herself, nice to see them enjoying the time together. As she watches though, she realizes more and more that she’ll never have that again- have her mum taking pictures of her and Greg posed by the fireplace, have the small handmade ornaments her mum made for her each year and gave to her as a gift to remember the previous twelve months by- and it all becomes too much, too overwhelming to think about.
“‘Scuse me,” she mutters as she stands abruptly, leaving the room in a rush. It’s not until she’s out on the back porch, sitting on the top step, that she can breathe properly again, and she closes her eyes and focuses on that- in for three, out for six, in for four, out for eight, the air cold on her nose. She’s shivering, but she doesn’t realize it, just sits out on the porch in her pajamas and watches as fresh snow falls and covers the ground.
She’s not sure how long she’s been out there when she hears the screen door creak open behind her; she turns to look over her shoulder and sees Zayn’s mum walking towards her, pulling her jacket tight around her and carrying one for Niall, too.
She sits next to Niall on the step, throwing the jacket over her shoulders and letting her arm rest there, pulling Niall into her so Niall can rest her head on her shoulder, and she tears up again when she feels Trisha press a kiss to the top of her head.
“It’s okay to be sad, y’know,” Trisha says after a moment, squeezing the top of Niall’s arm lightly. “You don’t have to pretend, love. Not with us, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Niall responds, voice small, quiet, and she can’t understand how she managed to surround herself with such wonderful people, how she has such amazing friends that even their families care this much about her, too.
---
The weeks following Christmas pass by in a blur (lunch dates with Louis and video game sessions with Liam and going to the record store with Harry, small little outings that help her get back into the swing of things), and next thing Niall knows, it’s Zayn’s birthday.
“Happy birthday, Zayner,” Niall sing-songs as she walks back into the bedroom the morning of his birthday, carrying a muffin with a candle stuck in the top of it and a glass of orange juice. “C’mon, wake up.”
Zayn rolls over onto his back and rubs at his eyes, smirking when he blinks his eyes open and takes in Niall’s appearance. She’s wearing one of his big, baggy v-necks, collarbones exposed, and it falls off of her left shoulder when she leans down to set the plate and glass on the nightstand. Her hair falls loosely over one shoulder and Zayn’s not entirely sure if she’s wearing pants or not-
“Up,” she prompts, and Zayn scoots so he’s sitting up, leaning against the headboard and watching as she pushes up onto the mattress, swinging a leg over his hip and settling onto his lap and nope, she’s definitely not wearing any pants.
“Can it be my birthday everyday?” Zayn asks, hands flat as they skim up the tops of her thighs, slipping under the hem of the t-shirt to grip her hips. “Getting woken up like this is the best.”
Niall rolls her eyes but leans down nonetheless, bracing herself with her hands flat on Zayn’s torso as she ducks her head to kiss him.
“You’d be 85 in no time,” she says when they separate, wrinkling her nose at him. “And I don’t date old farts, sorry.”
“Ah, shit,” Zayn murmurs, lifting a hand to cup Niall’s neck, thumb stroking over her cheekbone and fingers brushing the back of her head. “Guess I’ll have to wait my turn, then.”
“Yeah, you better,” Niall answers, words barely leaving her mouth before she’s kissing Zayn again, parting her lips and sucking his top lip in between her own.
They spend the day in bed- per Zayn’s “birthday wish”- trading lazy kisses and cheeky touches, watching cartoons and taking naps and only leaving the bed to go to the bathroom or to get more food.
They go out that night, with Harry and Louis and Liam- it’s the first time they’ve gone out as a group since the before Maura’s funeral, and Zayn can tell that Niall is nervous, that she’s not sure how to readapt to this setting just yet.
She sticks to Zayn’s side most of the night, tucked under his arm as they sit at a table in the bar, but she’s smiling and laughing along with them as they talk, sharing drinks and telling stories over the music that’s playing loudly.
“What an idiot,” Niall murmurs as Louis drags Liam out to dance, refusing to let him go out of spite after Harry’d told Louis that Liam said she’d stepped on his toes at his sister’s wedding the previous summer, and Niall laughs when she sees Louis “accidentally” step on Liam’s foot not even two seconds into the song. “Oh my God.”
Harry laughs outright when he sees it, too, shaking his head at Louis’ ways but smiling fondly at her from where he sits across from Niall and Zayn.
“You’ve created a monster,” Niall says to Harry, and starts to laugh again when she sees Liam trying to make multiple escapes back to their table.
It’s nice having them all back together again, and Zayn relishes the way they orbit around each other, falling back into a rhythm they’ve always had. It’s nice, he thinks, that their group is finally starting to feel whole again, and as cheesy as it sounds, it’s probably the best birthday present he could think of.
(That and the incredible sex he and Niall had had that morning, that is.)
He’s broken out of his thoughts when he hears Niall laugh loudly- he’s not sure what happened, but her eyes are alight with joy and she’s clapping her hands as she laughs; it’s the first time Zayn’s seen her laugh like this- without hesitation- and mean it since her mum had died, and he knows, of course he knows, that she’s still got a long road ahead of her- but right now she’s laughing, eyes bright and smile wide, and she’s happy, and he knows that she- that they- are going to be okay.
epilogue.