The Little Things; Ziall & Larry (AU) *Completed*

Chapter 11; Thick & Knitted Eyebrows & Loose Women & Cigarettes & Sneezing

Authors Note; For everyone commenting thank you so much it really makes my day! I mean, REALLY, i don't think you realize how much i love logging on and seeing more votes, fans, or comments! And i've got like, 1,275 reads or something all and all? Isn't that wonderful? ~Leam <3

(I dedicated it to RainbowSnake because she left a comment and... why not?)

Chapter 11; Thick & Knitted Eyebrows & Loose Women & Cigarettes & Sneezing

“We’ve just received final confirmation from Harickford Secondary School,” The man’s eyes are a dark, passive, honey colored brown. His lips too-full, his tongue like a caged snake behind too-white teeth. His fingers are long and his knuckles are hairy, “The casualty toll has been counted and the number dead is astoundingly high.” His voice is stoic, and a hush has fallen over the London news casting station. A red bus streaks pass an open window to the man’s left side. His eyes dart underneath his thick dark eyebrows, “There was a pipe bomb, set off. Several guns were used. 38 children are dead, and 17 children are in intensive care. All of them range from Year Nine, to Year Twelve. The youngest was eleven, a young Korean boy who had had skipped grades and the oldest was Mr. Gastinde, a 56 year old man who barred his window with his body and saved all 23 students in his room.” He stacked and shuffled some papers, letting his eyes get cast downwards. “In then there was another boy. I watched this clip earlier, and it made me really think… Zayn Malik, a Hero, made me really think…” He pretended to dab at his dark and vengeful eyes and made a motion. “This clip is gruesome, and is not suggested for audiences with weak stomachs or younger viewers.” In then Zayn was on T.V., brilliant in all of his bloody glory and he was a sort of Martyr.

*…*….*….*

“Did you hear about what happened, down in Mullingar?” The petite waitress asked the young man she was serving spicy tea to.

“Mullingar? Where is that?” He knit his caterpillar like eyebrows together, and set his linked hands together on top of the wooden table. He watched the red-head set down his meal, and he watched her brush her bright hair behind her ear.

“In Ireland, in Westmeath.” The small woman prompted, folding the black tray against her chest.

“Longford?” The boy asked, taking a tentative sip of his hot, sweet and tangy drink. It was the color of bark, and had a red swirl on the top from the orange margin.

It looked like blood.

*…..*….*….*

Aunty Leone was a loose woman. She was skittish, and her hands were always shaking, and she had this obsession with beaded jewelry and head bands that were atrocious. She had dyed red hair, and a double bottom ear piercing, a lip piercing, a cartilage piercing, and one that sliced through her right eyebrow and ended in a shiny silver ball. She slunk around a lot, and her eyes were the color of pine tree needles, dark yet frothy, fun. Her hair was the color of a popped cranberry, and it was styled in these tight, bouncing, cork-screw curls that fanned her face like a frizzy halo. She had naturally arching eyebrows, but she had incinerated them one night when she set the brick wall that formed part of her fence, on fire. She was a woman who loved leather bound books, and adventure, and believed strongly in high heels with too many sequins on them. She made a good living off of traveling the world, and she wrote down her adventures for the Chicago Tribune, a simple American newspaper. She had no idea she was even on Zayn Maliks’ emergency list until she got a call while she was sitting on her corduroy, green couch and sipping some strange Buddhist tea that stung her throat.

It was a man from NSPCC, or the Child Welfare System in all of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The man on the other line of the phone, who had a refrained Cambridge accent, informed Aunty Leone of her current predicament. Her nephew had been gravely injured in a freak shooting accident, it was tragic, and her niece, a small girl still only twelve, needed a guardian.

A temporary one, of course, he’d said reassuringly. All he wanted her to do was come down and sign a few release forms, and pay through all of the hospital bills, and she’d be free to leave.

With a twelve year old to take care of.

What was she supposed to say besides, yes? So that’s why she boarded a black, sleek taxi and rode it to the bus stop and from there she boarded a red double Decker to Heathrow in London, in then she got on a plane and landed at Dublin International. Then she boarded yet another taxi, and drove to Midland Regional hospital in Mullingar.

The chaos in all of Westmeath and Longford was horrible. It was a whirlwind of people, bustling around in the dank air that was bitter with blood and the smell of wet concrete. There was people outside of the hospital, but one small blond bloke caught Aunty Leone’s attention more than anyone else. His face was twisted in the worst type of grief, the type where you’ve witnessed the worst-case scenario and could do nothing to stop it.

The lad was sitting on the ground, his knee caps caked in mud and his eyes red rimmed and blood shot. He was leaning against the slick red bricks, and he had a fag between his lips. He looked to be no older than eighteen, his late teenage years. He wasn’t speaking to anyone, and he wasn’t near anyone. He was sitting all by himself, his hair matted, and this sick look in his eyes. It was like-the most tangible pain- the kind nothing can ever heal. The kind that scars you.

There were people crowding around all of the doors, a lot of them louder and more hysterical than the young boy sitting in the dirty mud. But none of them were as horribly conflicted as his young face. Leone’s impressive, black, double layered high heels got caught in the mud. She sunk deep, flailing her arms before bending over and un-wedging herself from the brown muck. She shook it off, smiling at her own stupidity, in then the musk of love and loss was strangling her again and she ran her hands down her face.

They locked eyes, for just one second, the old woman with the love for adventure, and the young man who had seen too much with his young eyes. They looked like onions, deep and layered, like you’d have to peel him back and back until you revealed his center. His eyes held hers, stoic and poetic in the slanting light, the rain hanging in the air like a constant threat. In then she bent down to keep herself from getting stuck in the ground again, and when she looked back up the boy was gone.

The only that showed off his presence was the glowing fag on the concrete where he had sat, and the indention his body had made in the wet mud. Aunty Leone, always a crazy woman, took of her heels and walked up the drive towards the glass double doors. She didn’t even know that the people, all of those with gratified and humble looks, and those with cameras and notepads, were here for her nephew.

A hero. So she held her heels for nothing more than the need for something to occupy her hands.

She walked into the hospital, and portrayed on a large screen in the center of the lobby was a television. It showed the picture of a young man, who had the cheek bones of Tricia, and crescent eyelashes. He was kneeling in the pouring rain, and a man was standing beside him with a gun.

In then, to Aunty Leone’s sick amazement, the shooter sneezed. He shoved his nose instinctually into the crook of his elbow and his fingers twitched as his body jerked. His finger pressed into the trigger, and he stumbled, the lead spiraling into the kneeling boys’ spine, right at the base of his back. The boy had been saved, the boy kneeling in front of some school, because his murderer had a cold.  Disgusted at the twist of fate, and oddly relieved the boy hadn’t been murdered, the woman walked towards the U desk to find her nephew, Zayn Malik.

She didn’t realize she’d just witness him getting shot, in front of millions. She didn’t even know.

She didn’t know that Kaden sneezing had not only saved Zayn Malik’s life, but also Niall Horan’s.

She didn’t get to watch the recap of Kaden killing himself, his jaw unhinging as his face slams into the wet, slick concrete.

She didn’t get to see her nephew collapse on the ground.

She didn’t witness the same mysterious blond from earlier running up beside the fallen lad and vomiting.

I guess fate is kind of twisted, isn’t it?

I mean, how many times do you thank god for random sneezing fits?