Buses & Bunk Beds (Zarry)

Chapter 73

The ride home from the hospital was the most terrifying one of my life. Not because Harry was driving too fast - in fact I don't think that it would have been possible for him to go any slower - but because I had never realized before just how dangerous the roads were. How dangerous everything was, from the strangers passing us on the way to the car park (who could have been criminals or perverts for all I knew) to the heavy metal of the car door (against which Serafina's chubby little fingers wouldn't stand a chance) to the huge vehicles passing us (which, if you thought about it were basically just giant weapons that could destroy anything in their path). How on earth was I supposed to be able to protect her from everything?

I sat in the back seat on the ride home, hovering over Serafina in her car seat in case she needed anything, while Jade sat on her other side and Harry drove with more care and caution than I'd ever seen him exhibit.

"What's she doing now?" he asked from the front seat. "Is she doing anything cute?"

"She's scrunching up her nose. Oh, now she's yawning. She's so adorable," I told him without looking away from Serafina's sweet little face. She was adorable. Adorable and perfect and I couldn't get enough of her. I'd say that I was surprised to find that I could watch her for hours without getting bored, but the truth was that I'd been doing the same thing to Harry for years. Something about those green eyes just captivated me, and to top it all off I could already tell that Serafina was going to have dimples, just like her Daddy, which basically meant that I would never be able to say no to either one of them. Not that I minded. I wanted to give them both the world.

"Do you know how lucky we are? To be able to buy her anything she could ever possibly want?" I asked Harry and Jade as I ran my fingers through the baby's wispy curls. "I wanna buy her every toy imaginable. Everything that I wanted as a kid but didn't want to ask me mum for since I knew we couldn't afford it. But I guess we don't want her to be too spoiled though, right? Maybe we should try to spoil her with experiences instead of stuff, yeah? But how do we decide how much is too much?" I knew that I was rambling, but as she reached out to grasp my finger I couldn't think of anything but the enormity of the task before us. "There's just so much to decide, and there's gonna be so many chances for us to screw this up. To screw her up. Like, it's on us to make sure that she's happy, and healthy, and what if we-"

"Hey," Harry said quietly, his voice laced with concern as he sensed my rising panic. "We're all in this together, and we'll figure it out together. Alright?"

"Alright," I said uncertainly, taking a deep breath and catching his eye in the rear-view mirror. He winked at me, looking as cheeky as ever, and I couldn't help but smile at him as I realized that he was right. We would figure it out together, just like we had everything else. We'd already proven that together we could do anything, and I had faith that this would be no different.

***

The next few weeks passed by in a blur of bottles and nappies and 3 am feedings, and they were some of the best of my life. Getting to know Serafina, to feel like I was becoming a real father and to witness Harry do the same, felt like a gift; one that I was grateful for every day. And believe it or not, being in a boy band was surprisingly good practice for having a newborn. We were already used to working crazy hours, to catching up on sleep whenever we could, and to doing whatever we could to make our fans (or in this case our daughter) happy. And both of us were more than willing to sacrifice our sleep and our sanity for her, be it by singing and dancing in front of her crib in the middle of the night, or by never getting more than two hours of sleep at a time to keep her fed and changed and smiling.

I had thought that I knew everything there was to know about love before, but I'd been wrong. Sure, I'd kill for my mum and my sisters, I'd die for Harry, but nothing, and I mean nothing, compared to how I felt about this little girl. She was my everything, in a different way than Harry was my everything. I didn't know that it was possible to love someone like this, without wanting or needing anything from them in return, and it scared the shit out of me. How could I survive if something happened to her? I wouldn't be able to, so I knew that I had to do everything that I could to protect her. Once again I wished for super powers, but this time I was wishing for inhuman strength, or healing abilities, or anything else that would help me keep her safe. She deserved nothing but the best, and I was going to do my damnedest to give it to her.

She seemed to capture our hearts more and more every day. She was such a happy baby that we'd nicknamed her Sunny, after her middle name, almost as soon as we got home from the hospital. I'd chosen the name Sunya, the Muslim word for brightness and sunshine, because that was how I'd always felt about Harry. He was my sun, illuminating the darkest parts of me with love and hope. And the name fit our daughter just as well. She was a little ray of sunshine when she was happy, all bright eyes and dimples. And even when she was mad and crying she still reminded us of the sun; a little ball of fire who wasn't afraid to scream her lungs out until she got what she wanted.

Jade stayed with us for a week or so, since we were all unwilling to spend any time away from the baby at first, and luckily Harry and her were getting along a lot better, too wrapped up in the baby to worry about competing for my attention. But we knew that we needed to establish a schedule, so Jade eventually went back to the flat across town, and Serafina started spending two days with her before coming back to us for two days. And I missed the baby while she was gone, I did, so much, but I also missed Harry while she was here. Yes, he was never far from my side, but we were both so focused on her that we weren't able to lavish attention on each other like we were used to. Our relationship was still fairly new, and I found it hard to be around him without wanting to attack him with kisses and cuddles, to drown him with my love as he did the same to me, to show him that I was his and he was mine.

So it was kind of the best of both worlds, really. We were able to spend a lot of quality time with Sunny when she was with us, and then we were able to get wrapped up in each other, to forget about everything but how much we loved each other, how much we needed each other, when she was with Jade. Which isn't to say that the baby wasn't constantly on our minds. She was, and we made Jade promise to send us pictures several times a day, and honestly we hardly ever made it the full two days without breaking down and showing up at the flat for a visit. But we also wanted to take the time to nurture and care for our relationship when the opportunity presented itself.

'Cause believe me, my love for Harry had only grown since the baby had entered our lives. If you'd asked me a month ago I would have said that having Harry cook breakfast for me completely naked was the sexiest thing ever, but it was nothing compared to watching him warm up a bottle while holding Serafina in his arms, singing softly to her. And seeing them both asleep on the sofa, her curled up on his chest, her hands balled into tiny fists, both of their mouths hanging open, made something inside of me ache, in the best possible way. I'd been lucky enough to witness Harry grow from goofy kid to pop star to rock god to the love of my life, and now I had a front row seat to see him in Daddy mode. And what a beautiful sight it was.

I'd always loved cuddling with him, but the feeling of love that washed over me whenever we'd lie in bed together, Serafina on top of me, her face buried in my neck, and Harry curled up next to us, his body flush with mine, holding her hand, his lips on my shoulder, blew everything else out of the water. We'd spend hours like that, our voices never rising above a whisper, laying our souls bare and murmuring sweet nothings and promises of the future to each other, as we fell into a contented sleep until the baby woke us again. To be surrounded on all sides by the people I loved most - by my family - made me feel like the luckiest man on earth.

I'd never really felt like I fit in as a kid. I was biracial, and growing up I'd felt like two different people depending on which side of the family I was spending time with. I'd always been more interested in art and drama than in sports, in a city where the coolest kids were the ones who were ace at football, so while I always had friends, I was never really one of the popular kids. Plus I was Muslim during a time when some people judged everyone against the deplorable actions of the few, despite the fact that their crimes bore no resemblance to my faith. But then the band came along and after a few bumps in the road, caused mostly by my inability to believe that I was as talented as the other lads, I'd finally felt like I belonged somewhere. Like I was where I was meant to be. But that was nothing compared to how I'd felt when I realized that Harry loved me too, and that he wanted to make a life with me just as much as I wanted to make one with him. I was meant to be with him. To love him. Just as I was meant to start a family with him. With him and our daughter I felt truly complete for the first time in my life.

***

A/N: Guys, there's only a couple chapters of B&B left, and that makes me SO SAD. I wish I could write about our boys forever!

Did y'all listen to FOUR? It's so good! Massive shout out to Brazil for leaking it!