Convalescence

XLIII.

It was way too bright. The curtains in this hotel room were paper thin, doing absolutely nothing to conceal the sun.

How much sun could there possibly even be in Ireland at this time of year, anyway? Didn't Niall say to expect dreary weather?

Lili yawned and blinked rapidly, eyes trying desperately to adjust to the brightness. She would never take the blackout curtains in Niall's bedroom for granted ever again.

She'd also slept horribly – between the time difference and the long nap she'd taken on the plane, Lili's body was all out of sorts already.

It couldn't have been more than 8 or 9am, but it took a lifetime to get to this hour. All Lili did overnight was toss and turn, imagining difference scenarios for how her meeting with the family was going to go, each one worse than the last.

She yawned again and untangled herself from Niall's sleeping form, reaching for her phone on the nightstand. He grunted but didn't wake. The heavy breathing and soft snores coming from his nose were incredibly endearing.

She smiled as she lit up the screen, squinting to read the time. Almost instantly, she gasped and sat up straight.

"Fuck, wake up Niall!" she exclaimed, pushing his shoulder. Waking up in a full panic had not been on her docket for the day – she'd expected the panic to set in much later.

Check out was at 11:00, and it was already 10:17am. Plus they needed to leave as soon as possible because of the long drive they had ahead of them.

They'd originally hoped to wake up at a decent time so they could get ready slowly and maybe have some breakfast before they got on the road, but now all their plans had been thrown completely out the window.

Niall groaned and barely moved from his spot on the mattress, shaking his head. Lili sighed. "I'm sorry, baby, but we've got to get moving," she whispered, pushing the hair from his eyes.

Waking him up like this was awful, but she couldn't avoid it.

Niall let out a long, deep inhale through his nose, signalling that he was finally awake, and rolled to the side to free himself from the tangle of limbs they'd grown into overnight.

"Are you alright, princess?" he asked, voice thick with sleep. "What's wrong?"

She leaned down and peppered soft kisses all over his face as she pushed the blankets away from their legs.

"It's almost 10:30. We need to get going."

Immediately, his eyes opened wide. He sat up quickly, throwing the blankets away from him in the process. He reached up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

"We probably should have set an alarm, shouldn't we?" he said, standing.

Lili took a second to drag her eyes up the length of his perfect body while he stretched his arms over his head. As per usual, he'd slept in just his boxers, and it really was a crime that they were under such a time crunch.

No human being should look that good when they first woke up.

She licked her lips and looked away, busying herself with fluffing the pillows so he wouldn't catch her staring.

"We really should have," Lili finally answered with a smile. "But we'll be fine. We can just grab some food on the way there if we don't have time now."

Just so she wouldn't keep looking at it, Lili dropped her phone on the nightstand and took a breath. If she paid too much attention to how quickly time was passing, she might go nuts.

She just had to move through the day one step at a time. She dug around her suitcase momentarily until she found her makeup bag, heading into the bathroom just behind Niall.