#bohemeyourself

But Zayn doesn’t know what even is wrong. His trip had been great, he’d gotten to see his family and Danny and Ant all in one fell swoop, had a good dinner, had a good sleep. His flight had been fine. No problems. There’s just some indiscernible mass of tugging, relentless emotion stirring around in his stomach. His heart feels heavy, his bones like they’re made of lead, the skin under his eyes bruised, thin and tender to the touch.

"I don’t know," Zayn answers weakly, hearing the crack in his own voice. He hangs his head, chin to chest, wincing at the tension that runs up his spine. He can feel Niall’s gaze on him, his presence in the room a tangible weight; Zayn’s spatial awareness seems magnetized to him, tracking even the minutia of Niall’s movements since they got up to the room. He turns around eventually, dropping his hands from his hair to dangle uselessly at his sides. Niall’s in basketball shorts and a white tank, hair soft and flat after a shower. He’s got a pen in one hand, tapping it against his upper thigh as he looks at Zayn.

"You miss your family?" his voice is quiet, warm, and it sounds so simple when he says it, so black and white.

Zayn nods, the truth of it sinking teeth into him.

"C’mere," Niall says, holding his arms open, and Zayn finds his feet shuffling across the carpet to him. He clambers into Niall’s lap quickly because he’s going to start crying in a second, the urgency of it making him bury his face into Niall’s neck quickly, snagging the front of his tank in a desperate clutch. Niall’s arms wrap around him, his fingers fanning out and rubbing circles against either of Zayn’s sides, slow and soothing. For such thin arms, they feel strong around him now, anchoring Zayn into the chair with him. "It’s okay to be homesick," Niall says, one hand roaming up to scritch at the nape of Zayn’s neck.

Zayn sighs, turning his face so his cheek can rest against the join of Niall’s shoulder. “Really homesick,” he mumbles.

"Tell me about it," Niall says. Zayn swallows thickly, uncertain if he can articulate it at all, if he even wants to try. But Niall’s hands don’t stop moving over him, following the natural contours of his muscles and pressing lightly at the tense spots. So Zayn tries.

In half-finished sentences and vague detail, he talks about how he misses the chatter of his sisters, the affectionate teasing of Danny and Ant. How he misses his house, the walls of which his parents had arranged to have blessed. The smell of the laundry detergent his mom uses. Her cooking. Even the way his dad snores after falling asleep in front of the telly at night.

"And something more than that, too," he says. "Like. I can’t explain it. A nostalgia I guess, for when we weren’t. Y’know."

"Famous?" Niall supplies from under him.

Zayn bites his lip. “Nah. I mean, yeah, that’s part of it. But I think it’s, like, gettin’ older. Yeah? Like, I imagine I’d feel this way even if all I’d done was move away to uni.”

"Yeah," Niall says. "Makes sense."

"Anyway," Zayn breathes out, fragile. He sits up finally, stretching away the crick in his neck. He gives Niall a slight, watery smile. "Sorry about that."

Niall’s hands have come to rest on the tops of his thighs, warm through the denim of his jeans. “Don’t apologize,” he says. “What’s the point of friends if you can’t cry to ‘em about shit?”

Zayn laughs, wiping the last of tear residue from his eyelashes. He reaches down to beep-beep Niall’s chest and then boop his tummy, touch gentle. “Thanks Nialler,” he says. “You’re the best.”

Niall returns the beep-beep-boop triangle and it knocks some of the leaden feeling in Zayn’s chest out, replaces it with something content and glowing. “No problem. Do me a solid though and let me up, me legs gone to sleep.”

"Ah, shit." Zayn scrambles off him, helping him up out of the chair and supporting his staggering steps to the bed. "Time for sleep?" he asks.

"Time for sleep," Niall confirms. He shucks his tank, soggy on one strap from Zayn’s crying, and crawls up the bed. He pulls the duvet back and flops beneath it tiredly, turning onto his back to look at Zayn. He frowns when he sees Zayn just standing there. "You coming?"