Confess Your Sins [Ziall AU]

Chapter 2

It was about four in the afternoon when Niall Horan was fully dressed in his white cassock and seated in the confession podium. Today he brought a book with him to keep himself occupied while waiting for people to come.

He partly read while partly listening to a lady confess about feeling the need to unearth her husband's vegetable garden as she felt that he spent more time with it than with her. At the end of her confession he said a couple of prayers off the prayer book that was tucked conveniently under his seat and went back to reading his book.

This went on for the next few people that came in the booth to confess. That was until he heard the voice. The same voice that had him in a daze since yesterday.

When the boy on the other side said, "I've came to confess again," Niall immediately folded the corner page of his book a placed it silently on his lap, listening attentively to the other boy. There was something about this boy's words and the way he says them that has Niall intrigued. Niall has yet to see the other male's face, but something about his tone just draws him in.

It's probably cause he's one of the younger ones who've came to confess, Niall reasoned with himself.

"Today I didn't beat anyone up, which is good I guess. But there's this one boy whom I've been trying to avoid yet can't seem to," the boy said. "He gives me butterflies and makes me lose my cool. Sometimes I have the urge to defend him from my friends that hurt him, but then I start joining in to hurt him. What is wrong with me, Father?"

The confusion in the lad's voice had Niall moved. He felt like he understood the boy, but not really. Niall knew that he wasn't gay, or at least that's what he thought. He was fine with boys and girls for the most part, not that he'll be getting some anytime soon judging by his social status at school. Plus he never really had free time outside of school for a relationship, not that he'd want one at this point.

"I know this isn't a counselling session or anything but I feel like maybe you could advice me on what to do with these feelings?" the boy asked after a pause of silence.

Niall's breath hitched. He wasn't prepared for this. Never had he expected that in his odd years of listening to confessions that he'd have to give advice like a psychiatrist. 

He didn't want to leave the boy hanging, so instead he decided to say, "I've never really had experience with situations like this, I'll think about it. Come back again tomorrow and I'll tell you what I think..." Niall tried to sound as professional as possible. He really did, but something in the way his voice was a little too high made the boy on the other side of the screen think this wasn't a usual priest listening, but he didn't dwell too much on it.

"Thank you, Father. My name's Zayn, and I'll be back tomorrow," the boy said in response.

Niall concluded their session with a short prayer and soon after the boy was gone, leaving no trace of his coming except for the soft jingling of bells.

Letting out a soft breath of air he didn't know he was holding in, Niall pondered over why he acted so differently when this particular person, Zayn, was doing his confessions. Niall had been listening to confessions since he was 14, heck, even before he turned 14 he sat in and listened for his dad. One would think that by now Niall would have grown accustomed to the instability of the human heart; the way one thing might seem like a sin to one but a norm to another. This Zayn boy being gay was a norm to Niall. He'd seen gay people and have heard people confess about being gay more than he could count. And, not beating someone up, why would you confess to that? Was this Zayn ultimately confessing about falling in love?

Niall was curious. He had been this curious before when a woman in her late eighties once came to confess about her childhood, and ended up spending two weeks telling him about her story of how she ended up in the suburbs of London all the way from Australia in her search to find her family that had given her up for adoption due to the war.