Zayn and Niall: Everybody Needs Somebody Sometimes

Everybody Needs Somebody Sometimes

(trigger warning: certain chapters in this story contain triggering mentions of self-harm, mental illness, and suicide.)

--

Niall woke up in wet, sticky sheets.

The morning light was seeping into the room, flooding over the ground but not quite touching the bed yet. Niall lifted his body off the bed, swallowing a hard lump in his throat and cursing himself. The sin was on the sheets, clear as day; a small sticky puddle below where his crotch had been. He just stood there for a moment, not paying attention to the vicious thoughts wiring through his brain. And then his body clicked into the usual resentful, angry mode that it had been resorting to for the past three days. He clenched his fists around the white sheets, tugging them off the bed with a furious determination and balling them up into a corner - he almost didn't notice how much his hands were shaking. Giving the pile a final kick, he made a mental note to chuck them into the laundry as soon as he could. 

Zayn.

That's who he'd been dreaming of.

In the bathroom, Niall splashed his face with cold water from the sink, staring up with bated breath at the face in the mirror. He'd slept like a baby all night, but there were dark smudges under his eyes, giving him a drawn and sleepless look. The icy water wasn't helping; the more he splashed it onto his face, the more it jolted him back harshly into reality. Here he was, standing in his dirty underwear in the room, trying not to think about the balled-up sheets thrown into the other end. There was no escaping it. He kept trying to push the last painful remnants of the dream away, but sordid flashes of memory were coming back and haunting him. Hands, skin, heavy breaths.

He padded back to the bed after a moment, his stomach squeezing uneasily. Feeling sick, he seated himself at the edge of the mattress and leaned forward, running a hand through his hair. It was damp with sweat between his fingers. Niall tried to focus on the smaller things around him. The birds outside the window, chittering excitedly. The scent of faded fabric softener on the duvet, of home. These little things gave him time to think. Sometimes the only way out of the whirlwind in his head was to grab onto the first distraction, cling onto it and hope it would lead him out. 

The dream had been vivid, God, so vivid that it had almost felt real, almost felt like it had actually happened... Niall remembered the stickiness in his hands when he awoke the first day, the smell and the puddle of warm wetness he was lying in. He remembered the shame, the guilt, the disgust with himself. He remembered the tears on his face.

And it hadn't stopped there. Day after day, Niall woke up in a flood of memories that never happened, the soreness in his legs, the heavy throat and shaking hands. 

What else could he do? What else, except hate himself a little more with each night, pull away from the ghost in his dreams, the beautiful boy who now lived almost constantly in his thoughts? These were the kind of things nobody could say out loud. This was the silent shame that he'd have to live with for as long as he took. 

This was the kind of thing that he would have to take a deep breath and swallow down, making his way down to breakfast without a word.

--

The boys were downstairs, all except Liam, who was sleeping in. The table was cluttered with breakfast plates, pancakes and syrup and eggs, sausages and cheese and warm toast. 

Louis, as usual, was indulging Harry in a terrible joke. Zayn was rolling his eyes across at them, overdosing on maple syrup and probably trying his hardest not to laugh.

Niall sat down beside him on the table, the word in his mouth tasting more bitter than usual. "Hey."

"Good morning, sleepy head," Zayn grinned, and God - he was beautiful. Radiant and full of light with those crinkles around his eyes. "You look tired."

"I am," Niall grabbed a pancake, tossing it onto his plate. "Starving, too."