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Everyone knows about the house at the corner of Lake and Washington street but nobody talks about it, at this point it’s just kind of that one house on the block that looks nice and the owner doesn’t bother anyone so it’s left as it is.
Of course, that still doesn’t stop kids and people who aren’t locals from being curious. There’s a few broken windows every couple of years, a new rowdy group of teenagers trying to find out if someone really lives in the house or if it really is haunted. Zayn doesn’t let himself get too bothered by it, as long as they’re not real estate agents or exorcists he lets it all slide. Figures in the ninety-nine years he’s been here, some harmless vandalism isn’t the worst thing that could happen. (It’s hardly that bad anymore--there was a time in the 60’s, with the Twilight Zone starting to air that he often had people outside the house with bricks and spraypaint, paranoia and local conspiracies about the haunted house on the corner. Zayn can tell whenever a new horror movie fad seizes rural Massachusetts based on how frequently his house gets broken into.)
Zayn firsts sees Niall when he’s little, six or seven maybe running down the street after his older brother when he spots Casper in Zayn’s front yard, peeks through the fence at the border collie and then looks up at the house. Zayn knows he can’t be seen but he half-hides behind the curtain anyway, hopes that the young boy doesn’t see the fabric flutter.
Zayn’s only allowed out once a year on Halloween and he’s got 364 days to brood over how horrible of a cliché that is and one day to actually enjoy it. The first few years it was overwhelming; he’d try to hunt down his sisters at college and his old friends and other ghosts all in one night, but he figures out pretty quickly that that’s not the best way to spend it, it’s his only night where he’s visible and physical and most Halloweens are spent eating as much food as he can bodily consume and walking around the neighborhood, loves seeing the Halloween decorations and how some traditions are so new and how some haven’t changed at all. Once he figures out that he can’t fly or magically teleport anywhere in the world he settles for enjoying his immediate surroundings, houses a few blocks over a whole new world to him that he can only see once a year, drenched in fake cobwebs and orange lights and plastic skeletons. He wonders what they all look like at Christmas time, if there really are homes in America that cover every square inch of the house in lights, can’t understand the practicality or meaning of it at all but he’s sure that it’s a beautiful thing to see, anyway.
And every year without fail, on the dawn of November first Zayn inevitably ends up on his front porch, his entire yard is TP’ed and his pumpkins are usually smashed and sometimes there’s eggs, spraypaint. Casper will nap on the front porch while Zayn cleans it all up and settles in for another year of waiting for a night to walk around the block again.
Zayn sees Niall, sometimes. The bus stop for school is only a few houses down and Niall’s usually late and running, flashes by in a blur, half-eaten bagel hanging out of his mouth while he struggles to pull the other strap of his backpack on. It’s Zayn’s morning entertainment, if he’s being honest. Reads the newspaper that Casper steals from the driveway of the elderly lady who lives next door and waits for Niall to run by every morning at 7:04, like clockwork. He’s more than a century old and the most amusing thing to him is a fumbling blond boy running to catch an ugly, giant bus.
*
Niall gets older as humans do and as Zayn doesn’t, he’s a teenager now with all braces and that sixteen year old swagger that all boys seem to have at that age. Zayn doesn’t see him as much, knows that as kids get older they spend less time outside playing in the street and more time doing...whatever it is inside that kids do these days (god he sounds so old) but he still runs for the bus every morning.
The second time that Niall is staring at the house he’s got another boy with him, a smile with pointy teeth and hair falling in his face and he reminds Zayn of Danny when they were growing up, the same type of smile he’d give Zayn before suggesting that they go try to tip Mr. Baxter’s cows. Zayn feels like he should be barricading his house with the way this mischievous boy is looking at it, like the house itself is a challenge and he’s about to burn it to the ground.
“You’re sure it’s haunted?” Zayn listens to them one say, they’re kicking a ball back and forth in the middle of the street in front of the house and Zayn sits at his piano and listens to them talk, feels a chill down his spine so strong it fools him for a second into thinking he’s alive again. “Because my mom always told me that it’s just empty--”
“It’s definitely haunted,” Niall interrupts, stubborn and sure of himself, “Or it’s some old hermit who lives there and never, ever leaves. I saw a dog in the yard once.”
“Maybe it was a stray.”
“It had a bandana. And the curtain moved when I looked up at the house.”
“Yeah, so? You’ve watched Ghostbusters one too many times, Niall, it’s probably just some old kook spying on all of us.”
“Does that mean they’re spying right now?” Niall asks conspiratorially and they actually stop talking. Zayn can practically feel their young eyes looking warily at the house. It’s quiet for another few seconds and Zayn raises a finger, presses down hard on one of the piano keys and there’s two shrieks from outside. Zayn laughs for twenty minutes.
Louis, as it turns out, likes Mischief Night more than he likes Halloween. Zayn’s in the kitchen making a list of things he needs to get the following night. (Zayn’s list consists mostly of food, a challenge to himself every year about how much he can eat before the sun comes up and he loses his appetite again for a year. The night usually starts with an elaborate meal, a big pasta dish or burgers or steak and by midnight it’s declined into five bags of Doritos and three Snickers bars while he and Casper sit in front of the TV watching bad slasher-flick reruns until the sun comes up. His list is divided into “Junk I’ll Be Able to Eat for the Next 24 Hours” and “Shit I’ll Need For The Next 364 Days”, dog food and flower seeds for his garden and batteries for his Gameboy Color and pens, paper, DVDs and books on clearance and he allows himself one new piece of technology every year, a Polaroid camera or a record player or a Walkman (his best purchase to date, if he’s honest), or a digital camera or a Rubiks cube (his worst purchase to date, if he’s honest).
And then he hears it. A thump on his front porch and then a hissed shut up. Zayn and Casper are at the top of the stairs in a second, Casper quiet like he’s been taught and slinking into the bedroom while Zayn stands and waits to see if they’re going to break in or just fuck up the exterior of the house.
The front door jiggles and Zayn holds his breath even though he supposes that he doesn’t have to. There’s a pause, Louis cursing outside and a hysterical giggle from Niall and then there’s a brick flying through the front bay window. Zayn mentally adds new glass pane to his list and watches as Niall and Louis half-fall through the broken window, stumbling over each other and covering the other’s mouths with a gloved hand.
Frankly, they look like idiots. They’ve clearly broken into some irresponsible parent’s wine cabinet, drank half of a bottle before deciding to dress themselves entirely in black and “terrorize” the local hermit. Honestly, all Zayn wants is a friend, maybe someone to talk to or play piano for, and he gets two bumbling teenagers crawling around his living room (dead room? Is Zayn’s entire eternal life just one big pun?).
“I told you nobody was living here!” Niall exclaims in a loud whisper, waving his flashlight around the downstairs rooms. Louis shushes him, digs into a backpack and pulls out a can of paint.
“If nobody lives here then they won’t care if we do this, will they, then?” he sniffs, digs out a screwdriver and starts working it under the rim of the can.
Zayn hasn’t gotten truly mad about anything in a long time. Ten years, maybe. But he’s truly mad now, the nerve of Louis, the nerve of Niall to go along with it, this kid Zayn has watched grow up and has never bothered learning anything about Zayn house and here he is, drunk and ready to throw red paint across his walls.
Zayn huffs a sigh, takes a few steps down the stairs and bangs a fist hard on the wall beside him. The two boys instantly freeze, flashlights jerking up around the room wildly to find the source of the slam and Zayn hits the wall again, a few steps closer to the ground now and Louis stands up, holds the screwdriver tight in his fist as if that’s honestly going to do anything at all. Whatever makes him feel better though, Zayn supposes.
“Who’s there?” Louis demands in a loud voice but the fear is there, Zayn’s done this for decades and he knows Louis feels it, can hear it in the tremor when he asks there?
“Louis, we should go,” Niall whispers quickly and Zayn’s almost to the last step now, stands quietly a few feet in front of Louis who’s still waving his light frantically through the hall.
Zayn counts to sixty, gives them a full, slow minute to decide whether or not to leave but Louis shakes his head and turns back to Niall, goes back to working off the lid of the paint.
If Zayn had a dollar for every time someone muttered it’s just the wind under their breath, he’d be rich even by today’s standards.
Zayn mutters “Get out,” under his breath even though they can’t hear him. He circles around the two boys, watches them as Niall gets out two big brushes and Louis finally gets the lid free. He’s chanting get out get out get out now, almost singing it but neither of the boys react and Louis dips his brush in the paint, stands up and starts towards Zayn’s wall of photographs and framed front pages of newspapers.
“Don’t you dare, you son of a bitch, get out,” Zayn’s standing right in front of Louis now and the boy is about to raise his brush to the wall when Niall yelps, “Wait! Did you hear that?”
“Hear what.”
“You didn’t hear a voice?”
Louis frowns at him over his shoulder but Zayn’s anchored to his spot. He tries it again and this time Niall actually flinches, jumps to his feet looking panicked when Zayn says, “Please get out.”
“Louis, we have to go. Now.” It’s the most conviction that Niall has spoken with all night and Louis must hear it too, drops his brush on the rug and Zayn grimaces, that’s going to be a bitch to clean up.
“Are you really gonna pussy out of this, Niall? After we came all this way?”
Zayn feels like he’s watching a soap opera, or a reality show, right in his own house, two idiot teenage boys thinking that they’re really that much better than Zayn because they have things like heartbeats and the ability to get drunk. Big whoop. And that’s it, that’s enough of this because now Zayn’s mad, kicks a foot back against the wall behind him and Louis and both boys scream, Louis practically jumps into Niall’s arms but they still aren’t leaving so Zayn starts pounding again, all along the wall until he gets to the piano and he runs a hand all down the keys, Casper howls upstairs and that’s enough, both boys are screaming and cursing at the top of their voices and grabbing their backpacks. Louis kicks over the red paint on his hurry to crawl back out through the window but as soon as they’re gone Zayn’s anger is too. Picks up the bucket and goes to get towels for the red that’s dripping onto the hardwood floor.
Midnight hits a few hours later and Zayn’s free to roam, takes Casper for a walk first all the way around the block before he goes to the 24 hour diner down the road by himself. Gets a thrill when the tired hostess makes eye contact with him, says Hi, table for one? and leads him to a corner table. It never gets old and he doesn’t think it ever will and maybe that’s why he never moved on to that other side. What does the other side have to offer that’s better than being recognized, being seen by other people?
It’s 6:50AM and he’s not waiting to watch for Niall this morning, decides that he’s allowed to be bitter about last night and sulks up in his room. It’s 6:55 when there’s a knock on the door and Zayn actually jumps, has a moment of sheer panic that someone saw him coming home from his walk last night or it’s a member of some cult determined to get him sent to hell or something. When he peeks out his window it’s Niall, standing on the front porch looking guiltily over at the broken window.
Zayn could answer the door. He could go down and open the door and say Hi, I’m Zayn and Niall would be able to see him and touch him and talk to him. Zayn really, really wants to answer the door but he doesn’t, he sits and waits. Watches as Niall sets something on the doormat and then turns and walks off to the bus stop, on time for once in his life.
It’s an envelope with Zayn’s address on it, 37 Washington St and it feels thick when Zayn picks it up, doesn’t open it until he’s inside sitting at his kitchen table stuffing his face with a slice of ice cream cake.
To whom it may concern:
My name is Niall Horan, and I’m sorry about your window. I hope you can get it fixed soon. I’ve included $100 for you to buy new glass and curtains, and maybe a new rug, even though the paint wasn’t my idea. I’m really sorry for the damages we caused to your house.
SIncerely, NH
PS: we’re reading To Kill A Mockingbird in school right now. If you’re some Boo Radley type, I figured it’s best not to get on your bad side.
PSS: can ghosts use money to buy things? if there’s a ghost here please give me my $100 back because I’m going to assume that money is useless to you.
*
Zayn walks down the street to the Horan’s house, sticks an envelope To: Niall Horan in their mailbox before he heads off to the shopping plaza down the road to get the things for his list.
Niall Horan;
Keep your $100, I’d rather have you not breaking into people’s houses and vandalizing them on a hunch that ghosts don’t really exist.
ZM
P.S. do you really think my piano playing is so bad you have to run away screaming?
Niall comes by that night, in the thick of trick or treaters who come up to the dark house and turn away when Zayn doesn’t answer. He stands just outside the fence gate, first stares at the broken window he looked at when he was a little kid and lets his gaze travel up to the second floor, stares at Zayn’s bedroom window for a long moment before walking off again.
*
Niall’s all grown up and stumbling drunk down the street with Louis and other boys after parties most weekends, every night it happens Niall and Louis insist on stopping outside Zayn’s house and telling their friends the story, remember when we were sixteen we broke that window, Niall almost shit himself, can’t believe Louis was going to paint KILL ME on the goddamn wall and Zayn listens to the story those nights, too, almost wants to interrupt them with the piano for good measure but never does, can’t bring himself to take away Niall’s little drunk moment of shining teenage glory in the small hours of the night when he’s with his friends. Some nights he and his friends will throw pebbles at the house, harmless and curious if Zayn will react and Niall aims them at Zayn’s window every time, is the last one still throwing them even as all his friends have started walking again.
And one night there’s a muted crash outside and it jolts Zayn away from his book, doesn’t even think before he’s lifting the curtain away from his window and Niall’s standing there at the fence over his wrecked bike, might have swerved over the curb too fast or something but his knee is bleeding and he’s leaning on Zayn’s fence and he looks up and Zayn doesn’t drop the curtain fast enough.
“Hey! Hey! I know someone’s in there!” Niall calls out but Zayn doesn’t move, keeps Casper close to his chest and if he had a heart he’s sure it would be hammering against his ribs by now, “Can you help me? Fuckin’ skinned my knee, a bandaid would be nice.”
Zayn can hear it in his voice, some underlying type of sarcasm as if Niall knows he’s wasting his time. When Zayn peeks out the window again Niall’s walking his bike down the street towards his own house.
Niall starts hanging around after that. Not obviously at first, some days he would sit on the curb at the corner and watch the pick-up baseball game that started in the street and some days he would ride his bike up and down the street and slow down when he cruised past Zayn’s house. And then he got less subtle, more reckless like that sixteen year old, walking to the bus stop and running his hands along Zayn’s fence, slowing on his way back to his house to fiddle a bit with the lock on the gate. Eventually it turns into Niall opening the gate, Niall walking along the inside of the fence. Zayn can’t really do anything to stop him. Doesn’t think he would if he could, anyway.
Niall’s a courteous intruder, at least, by the time he’s comfortable enough to walk up and sit on the step of Zayn’s porch he spends a bit tugging up the weeds around Zayn’s garden, says a playful “you’re welcome,” to the house over his shoulder. The next time Zayn expects Niall to come over, he leaves a pair of gardening shears on the stoop and Niall’s laugh rings out all the way up to the second floor where Zayn’s hiding.
For as patient as Niall is about cracking Zayn he’s curious, too, eventually works his way around the sides of the house to the backyard. That’s what surprises Zayn the day it happens, Zayn’s in the kitchen cleaning Casper’s dishes when he looks up, sees Niall’s face pressed against the window above the sink and both of them let out a yell, Zayn ducking to the floor out of instinct, a century of being dead and sometimes he still feels so alive and Niall’s still on the other side of the glass, tapping it and saying “Hey! Hey! I saw you! I saw you this time, you have to come out!”
The I saw you rings in Zayn’s ears for hours after Niall leaves.
Zayn’s got the windows open next time it happens, he’s got a habit of singing this time of day, just before it gets dark out and everyone’s usually inside for dinner. He’s scooping Casper a cup of kibble, starts out humming but ends up singing by the time he moves into the living room, let me see what spring is like, on jupiter and mars, starts rooting through his record bin while he hitches up his volume, fill my heart with song and let me sing forever more--
“I can hear you!” Niall’s voice comes from outside, Zayn leans over to peek through the open crack of the window and Niall is leaning on the gate smiling brightly, smugly at the house. “Never thought you to be a Sinatra fan, but.”
Zayn snorts a laugh, stops singing but finally pulls out the record he was looking for, Duke Ellington at Carnegie Hall and he sets the needle to the vinyl. He doubts Niall will know who Duke Ellington even is but Niall’s cackling when he hears it anyway, his laughter drifting inside and it’s a welcome sound, blends with the scratch of the record and the soft clinking of Casper eating from his metal bowl on the kitchen floor. For the first time in a long time, Zayn feels like he’s making a friend.
He starts leaving the back door open. Knows it’s only a matter of time before Niall comes snooping in through the kitchen one night while Zayn’s reading in the living room, sees the boy cross the threshold into the room and if he still had working lungs, he’d be holding his breath.
When Niall finally looks at him, it’s not like other close encounters he’s had with people. He’s not looking at Zayn’s forehead or his neck or the approximate area of his face, he’s looking at his eyes, makes it feel like it’s Halloween and Zayn is whole and physical and there.
“Hi,” is what Niall finally settles on, smile tugging at his features like they’re sharing some kind of inside joke and they are, Zayn supposes, feels himself smiling back.
“Hi.”
“So…” Niall stuffs his hands in his pockets, looks around the living room before looking back at Zayn who’s sat in his recliner with Casper laying at his feet. “You’re a ghost, aren’t you?”
Zayn shrugs, raises his hands and wiggles his fingers. “Boo.”
“You’re not going to like, kill me, right? Possess me or anything?”
Zayn snorts, stands up and wanders into the kitchen. “I dont think I can, to be honest. Should, though. Have you white boys learned nothing from when you were sixteen? Or from any of the shit movies that have come out in the last decade?”
“Alright, buddy, I offered you a hundred bucks and you returned it to be so I figured I was off the hook--”
“When has any horror movie just let the intruders “off the hook”?” Zayn laughs, too busy poking around in his barren pantry for anything he can offer Niall to feel the blooming warmth in his gut, feels like a proper person for the first time in ages. “Maybe this was all my ploy to get you into my house, yeah? Got you right where I want you, don’t I?”
The smile drops off his face when he turns to face Niall again, who’s gone white as a sheet and completely still in the center of the kitchen and Zayn backtracks fast, “no, oh god no I’m kidding, Niall, totally kidding, I’m not going to hurt you ever, I swear.”
“How do you--? Wait, so what’s your name,” Niall demands, isn’t quite smiling yet but doesn’t look as terrified as he did a second ago and that’s a start, at least.
“Zayn Malik,” he supplies easily, almost steps forward to shake hands but remembers that he’s actually fucking dead and lets it drop, goes back to hunting around for a can of soup or packet of crackers or anything that isn’t expired yet.
Niall repeats it under his breath like he’s trying it out, Zayn Malik and Zayn has to pause, lean on the wall next to the pantry because that’s the first time anyone has said his name in years, his father using his full name when he was in trouble, his sisters yelling at him when he’d tickle them until they gave him a spot on the couch, his mother crying it before he died.
“Zayn?” Niall says it again, pulls him out of whatever endless pit he was about to spiral into and offers him a warm smile. “You’re pretty cool for a guy who’s been dead for a couple decades.”
*
Niall adjusts shockingly easy to the whole “dead since 1915” thing, but Zayn lets it slide, supposes that Niall’s been theorizing about this since he was six years old and he was more or less anticipating it anyway, the first day he actually stepped foot in the house.
Mostly, they talk. Niall will start with a question and Zayn will go off, ends up talking more in the few hours that Niall stops by than he probably did his entire time alive.
“How did you die?”
and it’s easier to say than Zayn thinks it’ll be, knots his hands in Casper’s fur when he answers. “It was pneumonia or something, I think. It wasn’t all that bad, really, towards the end, I just slept a lot. I think that’s how it ended, really, I woke up one morning and my mom was sitting next to me crying and she couldn’t hear me when I tried to tell her I was right there looking at her. They moved out a few years later, when Safaa started high school and Waliyha started telling Dad how she would see me in the halls, some nights. Mom couldn’t take that, so. They left.”
“Can you leave the house?”
Zayn pauses, tries to come up with an answer that doesn’t make him sound like an idiot. “I’m not sure,” he finally allows, can’t quite look at Niall, “I’ve never tried to leave. Like, I don’t want to step outside my fence and….poof.”
Niall nods, takes it as an acceptable answer, leans forward with his elbows on his knees and wrings his hands together while he thinks of another question. “So, how do you have a dog?”
“Uh. You know how some people think that like, little kids and animals can see ghosts?” Zayn tilts Casper’s face up to his, kisses his nose and the dog licks back at him, doesn’t make contact but Zayn understands the love behind it anyway. “I’ve had dogs since I died, stray ones usually end up in my yard and they just hang around and I name them after famous ghosts.”
Niall snorts the way he does when he doesn’t believe Zayn, a laugh that Zayn’s become all too familiar with lately. “I’m serious! I had a cocker spaniel back in the 60’s named Mary, after Bloody Mary. Who doesn’t actually exist, by the way. And a big fuckin’ doberman pinscher, in the 20’s, named Baron. He and I kind of terrorized the entire neighborhood because I went through an angry phase.”
“So...ghosts go through the seven stages of grief…or, like…grave-f….”
“Niall, that was your worst one yet.”
*
“Zayn says that ouija boards aren’t going to work,” Niall tells Louis who still isn’t listening, too busy setting up the board and candles while Harry and Liam sulk cautiously in the doorway. “You guys can come in, you know. He’s not going to bite.”
“Why won’t it work?” Louis sighs, stands up straight to give Niall a skeptical look. Zayn can tell that Niall’s friends are just humoring him.
Niall glances over at Zayn who just shrugs, waves a hand. “He just says it won’t,” Niall finally replies and Louis rolls his eyes and scoffs.
“I could always try to possess one of you, if you want,” Zayn says from his chair, raises his eyebrows at Niall. “I’ve never actually tried it, but being inside Louis’s head might be kind of fun.”
Niall cracks a grin and throws his empty soda can at Zayn--it goes right through him, of course, bounces off the recliner and clatters to the floor and Harry jumps a bit, hisses, “Niall, what are you doing?”
“Zayn’s offered to possess one of us if you really want proof,” Niall answers conversationally as he moves to sit next to Louis and then the boys are forming a small circle around the board. Zayn’s been around all kinds of boards like this since he died and they used to work, sometimes. If they were well-made and the users believed hard enough, they were able to see him sometimes. But once the company got sold to be mass-made in the 60’s, the authenticity was lost, it’s not quite the same. Zayn can still sit next to the board and move the planchette with his own hand, though.
Niall’s smirking the whole time while they all situate themselves, Zayn settling in front of Niall between him and the board and places his hand overtop of Niall’s on the piece of plastic. “Can’t believe that Louis doesn’t believe you’re actually telling the truth,” Zayn mutters over his shoulder to Niall, stares hard at Louis from across the circle. “So what do they think if wrong with you, then? You’re talking to yourself or something?” When Zayn twists around to look at Niall the younger boy just smiles, shrugs in a way that answers Zayn’s question.
“Yo, Niall! You’re not gonna play. Can’t have you moving the piece yourself, man,” Louis says as he lights the little candles. Niall exchanges a dramatic look with Zayn and takes his hands off the board, scoots back so he’s out of the circle.
Louis, of course, is the one who decides to be the speaker for the group. Once the remaining three boy’s fingers are resting on the plastic Louis clears his throat, calls out “Is anyone there?”
Zayn sighs dramatically and hears Niall exhale a soft laugh behind him, reaches forward and pushes the planchette to yes. Harry squirms a bit from where he’s sitting next to Zayn and Liam is looking warily over at Louis.
“Shit,” Louis breathes, looks over at Niall who just grins. “Ask what his name is,” Niall whispers, and Louis narrows his eyes, asks loudly, “What’s your name?”
Zayn pauses, lets them all wait with baited breath before he guides the plastic piece Z-A-Y-N-M-A-L-I-K.
“Zayn? That’s his name, right?”
When Louis gets a nod from Niall he exhales slowly and then asks, “Uh, Zayn. When did you die?”
Zayn moves it to 1-9-1-5.
“Are you still mad about the paint incident from when I was 16?”
E-A-T-A-D-I-C-K
“Niall,” Louis says slowly, looks up and straight through where Zayn’s sitting to the blond boy. “Your ghost friend is kind of a dick.”
Zayn picks up the planchette and throws it at Louis’s face, resulting in a shrill scream and Louis launching himself sideways into Liam’s lap.
Niall’s red in the face from laughing, tilting his head back against the bottom of the recliner with a hand on his chest as he gasps for breath, yells “I told you so!” between chuckles. He’s laughing so hard it feels contagious and soon enough Louis is laughing, too, spreads around to all of them until even Zayn starts grinning. He knows none of them see him smiling but he hasn’t felt this alive in decades, anyway.
*
Zayn doesn’t tell Niall about his Halloween thing. He doesn’t know what it would mean, has a shock of panic when midnight hits and Casper immediately jumps on him and licks his face, already anticipating his once-a-year walk around the block. Zayn obliges, ignores the way his hands are shaking when he clips on Casper’s leash and walks out the front door, takes a deep breath before he steps out of the front gate and onto the sidewalk. Doesn’t disappear or disintegrate into hundred-year-old dust.
Every other year during this midnight walk the streets have been quiet, Zayn going unnoticed for the one day a year that he kind of wishes he would be noticed. He’s thinking about what he’s going to do today, there’s a part of him that’s thinking about getting spectacularly drunk and going to a place Niall called the “apple store”, doesn’t understand why there’s an entire store dedicated to just apples or maybe it’s a metaphor of some kind, when there’s headlights coming up the street behind him.
The car slows when it pulls up alongside Zayn, he barely has time to react because someone’s rolling the window down and it’s Louis in the passenger’s side and Niall in the driver’s seat. Louis is pale as a ghost (ha,) and Niall’s eyes are the size of dinnerplates when he gasps, “Zayn?”
Zayn and Casper are practically dragged into the backseat of the car, crammed between a duffel bag filled with Niall’s baseball gear and what must be ten empty rolls of toilet paper, two empty cartons of eggs, and a bag of spray cans. Niall tells him to buckle his seatbelt and then pauses, snorts when he tacks on, “Or should I say, boo-ckle. Your sheet-belt.”
Zayn’s never been in a car before but something tells him that most cars aren’t this messy. He also can’t figure out the “seatbelts,” he’s too busy trying to figure out how the metal piece and the button work in relation to each other that he almost doesn’t hear the two boys bickering in the front seat.
“What are you doing?” Niall whips around to ask, restrained by his seatbelt, at the same time that Louis yells, “I THOUGHT YOU WERE A DEAD GUY.”
Casper crawls into Zayn’s lap and he shrugs at Niall, gives him a sheepish look when he replies, “Um. Every year on Halloween, I’m a person again. What are you two doing?”
“Mischief night. Not important,” Niall says in a rush, ignores Zayn’s raised brows and the joke on the tip of his tongue about the Paint Incident all those years ago and instead demands, “How?”
Zayn shrugs again, honestly doesn’t have an answer for this, offers up the best explanation he’s been able to make up over the years, “Dunno, happens to every ghost that doesn’t move on, I think. It’s just once a year.”
Niall and Louis exchange a look, Louis with a shit-eating grin and Niall with a steady, solid look, the two of them exchanging some silent conversation. And then Louis lets out a bark of a laugh and Niall says a gruff get out, stops at what must be Louis’s street and Louis salutes him and gets out, laughs until he’s out of earshot.
Niall makes a gesture that Zayn assumes means come up here. Zayn moves to the front seat.
“So,” Niall breathes and it makes Zayn squirm, Niall’s studying him harder than he did when he first walked into the house when Zayn was actually a ghost.
“So,” Zayn repeats, can’t help but offer Niall a disarming smile and it seems to work. Niall lets out a breath.
“So you’re real.”
“Yes.”
“Just for Halloween.”
“Yes.”
Niall gives Zayn that look when he doesn’t believe him. Shuts off the car and then unbuckles his seatbelt, turns to face Zayn fully. Zayn just waits, can’t help but tense up when Niall lifts a tentative hand. Reaches across the seats and presses a finger against Zayn’s chest. Makes contact with solid skin and it’s a million nerve endings firing at once. Feels like a god, some kind of firecracker, something grand, important.
And then he’s lifting his eyes to Niall’s and Niall’s laughing into the kiss already, smiles against smiles. Niall is all warmth when he licks into Zayn’s mouth, solid and very much here, tastes like sugar and cigarettes. Niall’s giggling somewhat hysterically when they break apart, whispers, “you taste like how old books smell.”
“What’s that supposed to mean,” Zayn murmurs back, and Niall’s laughing louder, hands balled up into fists and clutching up the fabric of Zayn’s sweater and he just keeps rambling, “you’re kind of cold, too, like pins and needles when I touch you.” He pauses. “Not a bad thing, though.”
“Oh, good,” Zayn rolls his eyes, reaches over and wraps a hand around Niall’s bicep just because he can.
“So,” Niall says again, Zayn doesn’t comment on the fact that he can feel Niall flexing his arm under his hand, “where to, on your one day free?”
Casper jumps into the front seat and into Zayn’s lap and Zayn laughs, can’t seem to stop laughing and can’t seem to keep his hand off Niall’s wrist where it rests on the gear shift, “anywhere.”
They drop Casper back in Zayn’s yard and he understands, goes around the backyard to where the doggy door is and then it’s just Zayn and Niall grinning at each other.
“I’ve been dying for some chicken nuggets,” Zayn finally decides and Niall laughs, clean and clear out the open car window.
“You got it.”
*
They end up in Niall’s room by sunrise after a night of 24 hour diners and stocking up on Zayn’s junkfood, sneaking Zayn in past Niall’s parent’s room and the staircase. Niall plops himself immediately on the bed but Zayn’s moving towards the desk, taps experimentally at the laptop sitting open there, blinks when the screen comes to life and the last thing on the google search results is how to make a ghost visible.
Niall says his name quietly, like he doesn’t want to scare him off and Zayn turns to him, goes over to the bed.
“Teenagers are weird, nowadays.”
“Thanks, grandpa.”
Zayn considers answering, can’t think of anything he wants to say so he leans over and kisses Niall again, shifts him up further on the bed and hums into Niall’s mouth. The younger boy huffs a breath, fingers going to Zayn’s hips, tangling around his shirt to pull it off and Zayn almost can’t remember how to do this, His brain dropped off its train of thought somewhere back at thanks, grandpa and he’s hoping instincts kick in once Niall’s tugged off his own shirt. Niall’s fingers are on his stomach and it’s warm warm warm, Niall’s flushed pink all the way down his torso and Zayn can’t help but bite at the skin, wonders wildly if ghosts are really that far off from vampires because Niall’s body is the most enticing thing Zayn has seen in a hundred years.
“How’s this work,” Niall asks as Zayn’s working at Niall’s belt, can’t help but give the ghost a wild grin, knows that the timing of his questions is always the worst. “Can you…like…”
“Niall. If you say boo-ners, I swear to every god—“
Niall’s quiet for a moment before he breaks into a grin, starts laughing with his hands over his face, “booners, that’s a good one, Zayn, I hadn’t even thought of that—“
“Can I blow you,” Zayn deadpans just to shut him up, doesn’t really feel like going into the physics of why Zayn can’t get off as a ghost and instead would really like to see what Niall’s face looks like when he comes, doesn’t wait for Niall’s frantic nod when he shucks off the boy’s jeans. Niall’s stomach jumps when Zayn rests his fingers into the dip of Niall’s hips to keep him still, doesn’t want to say anything about how long it’s been because Niall obviously knows already. Niall doesn’t start squirming until Zayn presses his mouth to Niall’s thigh and then he exhales hard when Zayn takes him into his mouth carefully, tongues around the head before taking him in farther, slow not to tease but to adjust but Niall doesn’t seem to understand the difference, anyway, rests a hand on Zayn’s head and knots his fingers through his hair. Niall whimpers when Zayn licks up to the head again, picking up a steady enough rhythm that Niall’s hips jerk a few times, Zayn pressing Niall’s lower stomach firmer onto the bed so he can keep his focus, speeds up until Niall’s hitting the back of his throat and Niall’s gasping, tugging hard at Zayn’s hair and Zayn understands now what Niall meant by pins and needles, pulls off Niall’s cock and wraps a hand around him instead, releases Niall’s hips. Niall goes still and quiet when he comes over Zayn’s wrist, by the time Zayn’s moved back up to kiss him he can feel Niall’s heart pounding under the flushed skin there. “That was pretty quick,” Zayn teases and Niall’s eyes snap open, glares up at Zayn, “I guess you could say my blowjob skills are…”
“Don’t, Zayn,” Niall tries weakly but he’s already smiling, covering his eyes with an arm and Zayn grins, kisses Niall’s temple,
“…supernatural.”
*
It’s almost midnight and Zayn is still at Niall’s house and he doesn’t want to go back. He wants to stay here with Niall in his lap mashing the keys on this “X-Box controller.” It’s the first time in a long time he actually considers what’ll happen if he’s not back at his house by the first second of November first, he certainly doesn’t want to evaporate in the middle of Niall’s room but he’s really close to finally passing the first checkpoint of this game and Niall’s mouthing at his neck and so Zayn also thinks that evaporating right now wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, really. Quit while you’re ahead, and all.
“Hey,” Zayn finally says, sets down the controller and turns so Niall’s mouth ends up at his jaw. “I might have to go soon.”
Niall hums, doesn’t reply until they both look over at the clock. Sighs under his breath, something about goddamn Cinderella and moves off Zayn’s lap and presses his back against the wall. “What happens if you don’t go back.”
Zayn shrugs, looks at the television screen so he doesn’t have to look at Niall. “I’ve never not gone back to my house in time. You know, the whole poof thing.”
Niall blows a raspberry and waves his hands vaguely around. “Poof schmoof. You’re almost at the Nazi zombie bunker.”
It’s barely an argument to stay but Zayn does anyway, Niall puts a piece of duct tape over the neon 11:42 PM under the TV and hands Zayn his remote back, reminds him the difference between the jump and trigger buttons. When Niall scoots forward again and hooks his chin over Zayn’s shoulder and hugs him around the stomach, Zayn’s almost certain he could stay in this spot for another century.
*
Zayn wakes up in a bed that isn’t his own and he’s more perturbed by the fact that he has woken up, it’s definitely November first and he’s definitely laying in Niall’s bed and still existing, to some extent. Can’t help but frown when he goes to run a hand through Niall’s hair and it doesn’t catch on his fingers but Niall stirs anyway, blinks open and his eyes immediately find Zayn’s. Pins and needles, still. “Poof?” he grunts out, burrows deeper into the blankets and closes his eyes.
“I guess not?”
Niall doesn’t answer and Zayn would think he was asleep if he didn’t see him smiling.
*
So Niall and Zayn work out pretty quickly that Zayn was always able to leave the house. They don’t talk about what exactly would cause Zayn to move onto the other side, if ghosts even have free will in a choice like that. Zayn just starts leaving the house, more. Walking Casper (without a leash, because as funny as the whole “invisible person walking a dog on a leash” would be, Zayn would rather not end up on one of those Ghost Hunter shows, thanks), lots of time at Nialls house.
Louis sees Zayn, now, makes lots of jokes about “Niall, you never told me your boo-friend was hot” and “don’t spook until you’re spoken to, Zayn” but at least it’s better than Louis trying to vandalize Zayn’s house.
It’s still hard, sometimes, when Zayn can’t touch Niall or when Niall has to go off to school or work and Zayn’s stuck wandering around his house just like always, feels like a puppy waiting for its owner to get back but he’s just bored, can’t go to stores and buy things with Niall or Louis to help him and he can only walk Casper around so many times. It’s worth it, though, when Zayn can spend a night at Niall’s and watch the younger boy put a big X through the day on the calendar, counting down until Halloween again and then insist on showing Zayn a movie that he hasn’t see yet. Tonight’s is the third Pirates of the Caribbean, Niall mumbling about “well, at least you’re not the captain of the Flying Dutchman, he can only leave the ship once every ten years…” and Zayn laughs, pulls a hand across Niall’s hair and even though he doesn’t make contact, Niall still shivers, and that’s enough.
And 364 days go by pretty fast, truthfully, for Zayn at least. Because now it’s midnight on Halloween again and he’s sitting up and kicking Niall hard in his bed, as soon as his eyes are open they’re kissing. Niall’s laughing into it, has something to say so Zayn finally breaks them and sighs what.
"So does this mean...." Niall’s giggling and Zayn can already see where this is going, tries to cover Niall’s mouth with his hand before he can say it, "shut up Niall, don't say it--"
"...does this mean..."
"Niall! Don't say it!"
"Zayn, does this mean you're my boo?"
“I hate you.”