Buses & Bunk Beds (Zarry)

Epilogue

18 months later...

I rested my head on the cool glass of the window in Serafina's room, looking down at our backyard and all of the people milling about as I fought to quiet the thundering in my chest. She was asleep in my arms, heavy and sprawled out, completely oblivious to the fact that this was one of the biggest days of her fathers' lives. It'd been a risky move, lifting her out of her crib during nap time, especially on a day when everyone was counting on her behaving (which was never close to a guarantee or even a likelihood), but I'd needed her. Needed to see her smile in her sleep as I kissed her cheek, to play with her curls and smell her strawberry shampoo. Needed her to calm me the fuck down.

It wasn't the commitment that I was worried about. I'd been counting down the days until I could marry Harry since the moment I'd proposed. No, it was the fear that something could go wrong; that I might screw something up and ruin the day for Harry. I needed things to be perfect for him.

Not that he'd put any pressure on me. Quite the opposite in fact. He'd suggested that we skip a big affair and head to the closest courthouse or even Vegas before we'd even made it off of the Ferris wheel. I'd been tempted to agree with him. After all, I couldn't wait to be married to him, to have him be mine in every way possible, and it would have been a fucking blessing to be able to avoid the media circus that would surround a wedding between us. But I couldn't do it. I didn't want to take any shortcuts when it came to Harry. I wanted him to have a wedding that he would look back on with no regrets, and I wanted us to be able to look at photographs from the big day on our fifty year anniversary. I wanted to see him walking down the aisle towards me and to kiss him at the altar and to feed him cake. And most of all I wanted to promise to be his forever, out loud, in front of all of our loved ones.

So we'd set about planning our wedding, Harry taking the lead on most of the decision making, though I was always willing to give my opinion when he asked. Between two more tours and recording another album we'd taken a lot longer to get here than I'd anticipated, but I knew that the wait would be worth it as soon as I could call him my husband.

The time had passed quickly, Serafina amazing us more and more every day. At first I'd tried to insist that she call me Captain of the Universe, but I was glad that we'd decided on Papa when "Pa" ended up being the first word she said. She'd been learning new words left and right ever since, and I was fairly certain that she was a genius. 

Her second word had surprised us all, though I'd never seen Niall happier than when she randomly shouted out "Bud!" when he'd walked into the room. He'd insisted that she'd been talking to him, and that we were all to call him Bud whenever he was in her presence from then on. This led to Liam and Louis insisting that they be called Bro and Dude, so now Serafina basically sounded like a drunk frat boy whenever she was around them. It was adorable honestly, but pretty much everything she did was.

She laughed like a loon, like Harry, wild and free, like it couldn't be contained, her whole body shaking with it. She liked to be naked as much as her Daddy did too, always stripping down and trying to take her diaper off. But maybe nurture had a little something to do with how we turn out too, because she was also a lot like me. Quiet until she had something she felt was important enough to say, when she would have no problem making herself heard, and perfectly content to spend hours coloring or being read to.

We'd discovered that a baby is a really good buffer during the first visit from my parents, right after Serafina had been born. It'd been really nice to see my dad again, and to not have him look at me with disgust in his eyes. I could see that he'd finally realized that Harry and I were truly in love, that this wasn't just some passing phase, and I think him seeing that, up close and undeniable, allowed him to accept me back into his heart.