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The 5th of October
“Does everyone know what they want to be for Halloween?” Zayn asks, lifting Liam up into his arms, his children have a knack for running around wildly when they’re out in public, and he doesn’t want to lose them in a maze of costumes and other families.
“Poppy, I want to be something that’s, um, that’s not scary, because I don’t want to scare people,” Harry says, nodding his head seriously.
“Harry, make Daddy carry you, okay? Please,” Zayn instructs motioning towards Louis. “And I’ll make you don’t get anything scary, okay? Don’t worry.”
“Niall, what about you?” Zayn asks, beginning to guide his family through the costume store now that the youngest are no longer walking free. “Do you still want to be a vampire?”
“I don’t know,” Niall says, shrugging his shoulders. “Can I just look around?”
“Yeah, you’re free to look,” Louis says. “I’m going to take Harry over there, do you want to stay with me or Poppy?”
“I’ll go with you,” Niall says, walking off in the direction that Louis pointed.
Zayn fights the urge to tell him not to walk ahead and it must show on his face, because Louis is squeezing his bicep gently and kissing him on his cheek, right below his temple. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” Louis mumbles before he’s gone, leaving Liam and Zayn alone.
“Looks like it’s just us, bub. Do you know what you want to wear?” Liam shakes his head, eyes scanning the costumes on the shelves. “Do you want to be something scary? Like a vampire or a werewolf?”
“No,” Liam says, his eyebrow furrowed. “I’m not scary.”
“No, you’re not scary, but sometimes costumes are scary. What about this?” Zayn asks, pulling a blue Power Ranger suit from off the rack, showing it to Liam.
Liam frowns and shakes his head. “No, Poppy.”
“Hmm, well do you want to be an animal?” Liam shakes his head. “What about a little fireman? You’d look so cute in the little hat.”
“Can I hold your hand?” Liam asks, looking at Zayn, and if Zayn had to guess, he would say that Liam is purposely trying to make his eyes a little wider so he can get what he wants.
Zayn sighs and sets Liam down, immediately grabbing his hand. “Come on, you take me wherever you want to go.”
Liam smiles and nods and begins to guide Zayn through the store.
They pass through all different sections, Liam’s hand dragging along each costume as they weave in and out of the aisles. He stops to look at some of them, never saying anything, just shaking his head and continuing on his journey. Zayn’s beginning to think that he’s not going to find anything in this store - and they’ll have to go to another, which would have all the same costumes, but Liam would somehow be convinced that they’re all new – but then Liam grabs at one costume hanging on the shelf and turns to Zayn with a smile.
“I’m be Woody, Poppy,” Liam says, tugging on the costume.
“And you’re going to be adorable as Woody,” Zayn mutters, grabbing the costume and draping it over his arm. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go find Daddy.”
They find Louis, Harry and Niall standing in the section dedicated to animal costumes with Harry jumping up and down in excitement.
“I love it. I love it. I love it,” Harry is chanting, a wide smile on his face.
It’s a Dalmatian costume, which really is a white and black spotted onesie with a hood made to resemble a dog’s head. It’s the exact opposite of scary, and so utterly Harry that Zayn smiles when he sees it.
“You’re going to look cute in that,” Zayn tells him to which Harry blushes and smiles. “Liam, show them what you picked out.”
Liam points to the package in Zayn’s hand and says, “It’s Woody.”
“Wow,” Harry says, gasping quietly. “Liam, you’re going to look very nice for Halloween.”
“And you can bring your Woody doll with you,” Niall adds, smiling at Liam. “But he needs a Cowboy hat, this doesn’t come with a hat.”
“I’ll get him one,” Louis says. “I will not have my son be a hatless cowboy, don’t worry.”
“Are we going to put a snake in his boot?” Harry asks, looking genuinely concerned.
“I don’t want a snake,” Liam says.
“No, we’re not doing any snakes,” Zayn mumbles, sighing quietly. It seems to please both Harry and Liam. “Niall, where’s your costume? Do you need help finding one?”
“Nope,” Niall says, shaking his head.
“Niall was having some trouble finding a costume, so I told him that I’d loan him one of my jerseys and he’s going to go as a sports star,” Louis comments, looking far too pleased that Niall is going to be wearing the jersey.
“Is that a good costume?” Niall asks, biting his lip as he looks at Zayn.
“I think it’s wonderful, whatever you want to be I’ll be happy with,” Zayn replies.
“Then it looks like we’re all done here, yeah?” Louis asks, looking at everyone with raised eyebrows, checking to make sure that everyone is ready to leave. When everyone nods their heads, Louis says, “Good, then let’s all follow Poppy to the check out so we can pay for this stuff.”
“Wait. What’s that for?” Zayn asks, pointing at the face paints in Louis’ hand.
Louis shrugs. “We’re going to need a costume, aren’t we?” He says, grinning. And Zayn rolls his eyes, because of course Louis would have been thinking about them while shopping for the kids.
~~~
The 9th of October
Zayn’s surprised when Louis brings six boxes from the basement upstairs, all of them marked with ‘Halloween’ on the side. It’s Zayn’s first Halloween with them and he never imagined that they took it so seriously.
“Louis, do I want to know what is inside of those?”
Louis frowns and flips the first box open. “Well, we have mostly indoor decorations but some spider webbing and a giant purple spider for the windows. And some homemade ghosts that we like to hang from the trees, but everything else is for the inside.”
Zayn sighs and is grateful that he listened to Louis when he said that the kids should go to Nick’s for the day while they take care of house. Louis had said it’s what he did every year, well; after Harry cried years ago thinking that the spider is real. Zayn had tried to defend him, because Harry’s not two anymore, but Louis wouldn’t listen. He simply kissed Zayn and told him to say goodbye to the kids because he wouldn’t see them until dinner.
“Where should we start?” Zayn asks, pulling open another box to find little bats and these weird orange and black ruffled looking streamers.
Louis shrugs. “We can start anywhere you want.”
Zayn nods and sets off towards the kitchen to get tape for the bats so he can place them on the walls around the house.
As he’s working, he can’t help but think about the years that this has taken place inside this house. It’s all these traditions, these memories that this family has without him, and yeah, he’s apart of the family now, but he wasn’t before. He hasn’t always been legally married to Louis, and he hasn’t always been Niall, Liam and Harry’s father, at least not until the adoption finally went through, so stuff like this is just a reminder to him that there have been long periods of time without him in his four favorite people’s lives.
He wonders how many times Louis and Eleanor decorated together, if at all. The thought sends an ugly twist in his gut, making him slap the bats onto the wall a little harder, making sure that they stick, even if it’s unnecessary.
“What’s wrong?” Louis asks, stopping and grabbing Zayn’s wrist gently.
“Nothing,” Zayn says, trying to shrug out of Louis’ grasp. It’s not anything, not really. Zayn’s just being silly, he’ll get over it.
“No, stop,” Louis says, his voice firm. “Don’t. Don’t hide whatever this is. Tell me.”
“It’s just, you have these traditions, these things that you all do together every year as a family, and it’s like. I’m new, right? I’m not really embedded in any of this. I’m just being thrown into the mix,” Zayn mumbles, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know, just wish that there were things that we could that are new, you know?”
Louis is frowning at him, brushing his thumb gently against the bone jutting out at Zayn’s wrist. “You know, these are all things that every family does together. We’re not special in any of this.”
“I know, but you guys have your special way of doing things and it’s just. I’d like for there to be something new this year.”
“You’re new,” Louis says, stating the obvious and Zayn frowns. “Hey, no, come on. You know that I don’t mean it as a negative or to make you feel worse. I’m just saying, like, you’re new and just you being here is beginning to change the traditions of the things that we do.”
“How?” Zayn asks, trying to keep the pout of his voice, trying not to make it obvious that he needs Louis to wrap around him like a security blanket and keep him from feeling like he’s not supposed to be here. He needs reassurance.
“I usually do this alone, for one thing. Now I get to look forward to your company when doing it. And when we go to the pumpkin patch, you’ll be there. You’ll be there for every step of this and you’re going to be embedded into their memories. None of these things are about who’s there and who isn’t. It’s just about family doing things together.”
Zayn sighs and nods. “I know. But. I’d like to do something new with the kids.”
“Well, I’m going to go outside and get everything set up out there. You can stay in here and think of ideas.”
“I will,” Zayn says, wrinkling his nose at Louis.
Louis smiles and leans down, kissing him gently. “I know you will.”
~~~
The 13th of October
As it turns out, Zayn’s need to have the family together at all times, which is always respected, is mostly ignored when they arrive at the farm where they’re going to be picking their pumpkins.
Everyone’s so excited, even Liam, who for the most part, shows all his excitement in quiet ways, not in the overly obvious way of his brothers. So it’s nice for Zayn to see how happy they all are, but it’s stressful to watch as they run around wildly.
“Poppy, I want to the animals,” Harry shouts, tugging on Zayn’s arm to try and drag him away from Niall, who is trying to tug him in the direction of the little maze the farm has made of hay barrels.
“No, Poppy, you promised that we’d do the maze first,” Niall says, glaring.
“I know, and we’ll see it, I promise,” Zayn says, gripping Harry’s hand. “We’re going to see everything, but I promised Niall that we’d do the haunted maze, so we’re going there first.”
“That’s scary,” Liam says.
“You and I are going to wait outside,” Louis explains, lifting Liam into his arms and winking at Zayn. “We’ll be over there.” He points in the direction of the store where people go to pay for their pumpkins. “Harry, do you want to go with Poppy and Niall through the maze or do you want to go stand over there with us?”
“I don’t know,” Harry says, biting his lip. “Am I going to be really, really scared?”
“No,” Niall says, shaking his head. “They have some skeletons with glowing eyes and ghosts in there, but they’re just sitting there. Remember? We did it last year.”
“Okay, I’ll go with you, but hold my hand,” Harry says, letting go of Zayn’s hand to hold Niall’s, which shouldn’t feel like an insult, but it kind of does, mostly because he wants a hand to hold as they navigate through the stacks of hay to try and find their way out.
It’s just like Niall said it would be with sheets draped over things with faces drawn on them to mimic ghosts. Those are fine, but Harry does scream when he accidentally runs into a skeleton.
“It tried to kill me,” Harry shouts, rushing out of the end of the maze. “Can we see the animals now?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just rushes across the way towards the animal pins where Louis and Liam are standing in front of an enclosure with a cow inside of it.
“I don’t want to look at those, I just want to get our pumpkins now,” Niall says, looking up at Zayn as they make their way over towards the rest of the family.
“Well, you got to do your maze, so it’s only fair that Harry gets to look at his animals.”
“What about Liam? What does he want to do?”
Zayn shrugs. “I think he’s like you, he just wants to get a pumpkin. He’s been talking about it all week.”
“Poppy, look,” Liam shouts, jumping excitedly and pointing at the brown and white cow inside the fenced area and the giant pig in the space next to it. “It’s big.”
“Niall, what does it say on this thing?” Harry shouts, squinting his eyes and trying to read it. They’ve been working on helping Harry learn to read, but there are still a lot of words that he doesn’t know, and he gets too embarrassed to read in front of anyone but the family.
“It says to be careful that she bites,” Niall reads.
“She?” Liam asks.
“Yeah, it says her name is Pearl,” Louis supplies, looking impressed.
“What’s the pig’s name, Daddy?” Harry asks.
“Minnie, apparently,” Louis reads aloud. “Doesn’t look very miniature, does she?”
“Daddy, you can’t be mean to the pig, because she can hear you and that’s not very nice to say,” Harry says, giving his father a disappointed look before he follows Niall and Liam to go look at the chickens.
“Yeah, Daddy that’s not very nice,” Zayn scolds, causing Louis to laugh.
“It’s a 500 pound pig, I didn’t mean for it to come off as rude. It’s just. She’s a pig. Literally, not like,” Louis cuts himself off and groans, forcing Zayn to laugh and shove at his side. “I want to be done with these animals.” He links his fingers with Zayn’s and pulls him along.
“These chickens are boring,” Niall says, forcing an agreement out of Liam and Harry, both of whom nod their heads in agreement.
“All right,” Zayn says, smiling at Niall. “Now we can go get pumpkins.”
“Finally,” Niall half shouts and half sighs, smiling at Zayn before he races off towards the stacks that they’re able to choose from.
~~~
The 19th of October
Liam’s sitting at the kitchen table coloring a picture of a jack-o’-lantern while Zayn rushes to get the cookies ready for when Niall and Harry get home from school.
It’s the thing that Zayn came up with to put his own stamp on Halloween traditions in the family. It might be something that sticks with them for years like the other things, but it’s something that he wants to do with them. And decorating cookies is something that he knows all three of his children find fun.
He’s got cookie cutters in the shapes of cats with their backs raised, ghosts, bats, and pumpkins. All of the shapes picked out by him, but all the icing and sprinkles and other toppings were picked out by Liam, who took his job very seriously, picking out sprinkles in white and purple and black and orange. He got different colored icings, one of each that he says he’s going to share with his brothers, not like he has much choice.
Zayn’s pulling the last batch out of the oven when Harry and Niall get home with Louis. He can hear them before he sees them, hears as Harry shouts, “you baked without me”, and feet can be heard across the floor until a gasp sounds from the other side of the room.
“Poppy, you made cookies without me,” Harry says, pouting and glaring at the same time when he sees the tray of cookies in Zayn’s hands
“I did, yes, but,” Zayn says, trying to redeem himself, but Harry cuts him off.
“No. I like making cookies. Why did you do it without me?”
“I’m not doing it without you,” Zayn says quickly and Harry glares at him harder. “I’m not. I wanted them to be ready because you’re going to decorate them with your brothers. I have more finished, but these are going to cool while you work. Isn’t that okay?”
“Niall, sit at the table with your brother,” Louis instructs, motioning towards the table before he presses a gentle hand on Harry’s shoulder and guides him towards Zayn.
Zayn watches with a frown, kneeling down so he’s in front of Harry.
“I’ll get the table set up,” Louis says, grabbing supplies and leaving Harry and Zayn alone.
“Baby, I wasn’t trying to upset you,” Zayn says, carding his fingers through Harry’s curls. “Don’t you want to make cookies with everyone?”
“Poppy, you hurt my feeling,” Harry mumbles, sighing quietly.
“What if I let you do some of my cookies? Then you could have a little more to decorate. Wouldn’t that make you feel better?”
Harry pretends to think about it for a moment, trying to hide the smile on his face as he drops his head onto Zayn’s shoulder and nods. And Zayn sighs in relief, because he didn’t want this to turn into something that they could never do again. He’s tried so hard to come up with a tradition that they could do, something that they could do until all three of the boys grew out of Halloween and no longer wanted to spend Halloween together as a family but out with their friends doing things that Zayn doesn’t even want to think about, because they’re still young, Harry and Liam have such a long time to get there, Niall being a little closer, and he just wants something before that all happens. Something that he came up with on his own and added to the family, even if decorating cookies isn’t that big of a deal.
Harry sits in his lap while they decorate cookies, starting off with a cat shaped one.
“I think I want him to be orange,” Harry says, grabbing the tube of orange icing and getting to work. He continues to vocalize his plans for the cookie while he works.
Louis, sitting next to Zayn, says, “Liam, that’s the scariest ghost cookie in the entire world.” It forces a blush out of Liam, who smiles and mutters a quiet thank you in his shoulder before he grabs another cookie to decorate.
~~~
The 25th of October
“Now, tell me the rules of pumpkin carving,” Zayn says, looking down at his kids with a raised eyebrow.
“Have fun,” Harry shouts, his fist in the air, looking around triumphantly.
“No, but that is a rule, but what is the most important rule,” Louis says, rewording Zayn’s question.
“No knife,” Liam supplies, rubbing at his pumpkin. Zayn knows he’s excited to pull the top off and grip all the guts out. He can see it in his eyes, but he wants to make sure that everyone understands that they’re not going to be touching anything sharp. They’re going to draw the faces on and then Louis and Zayn are going to take care of it.
“We know that, Poppy,” Niall sighs, shaking his head.
“Yeah, we know that, Daddy,” Harry says, addressing Louis since Niall didn’t.
Zayn sighs, because they’re children of Louis’ and there’s no telling what they’ll decide to do. “Okay, then you can start. Remember, put it all in your bowl and then you can draw the face on it.”
“Poppy, I want mine to have a pretty picture on it. Can you do pretty pictures?” Harry asks, removing the top carefully and sticking his entire arm in. “Ew, it’s all slimy.”
“I can only do faces, baby, sorry,” Zayn says, ruffling Harry’s hair.
“Mine is slimy,” Liam says, dropping a tiny handful of the insides into his bowl. It’s going to take forever for their tiny hands to empty these things.
“I like it,” Niall mutters with a grin. He’s got a bunch of it in his hands, playing with it and squishing it around. “It feels cool.”
Louis smiles. “I want to help, who is going to let me?”
“Not me,” Harry and Niall says in unison, leaving Liam to say, “okay.” He doesn’t look too upset about it, instead he looks grateful when Louis joins him in emptying out the contents of his pumpkin.
When it’s time to draw faces on them, Liam gives his two circle eyes and a circle nose with a wide half circle smile. His circles aren’t perfectly, some sides bigger than the other, but it’s so endearing that he’d want his pumpkin to smile that Zayn can’t keep the smile off his own face while he cuts out the shapes for Liam.
Harry’s pumpkin has two inverted triangles for eyes, and one triangle for a nose. The mouth that he draws is a half circle smile like Liam’s, except Harry’s has two little vampire fangs. Harry also added a touch of lines that he tells everyone are cat whiskers, because he’s not making a vampire, but a cat, and cat’s have sharp teeth so he had to give them that.
Zayn tries not to laugh when Louis grumbles under his breath about getting the hard one.
Since Zayn finishes carving his first pumpkin first, he’s forced to carve Niall’s, who went all out with his, giving it triangle eyes and eyebrows that line it perfectly. He adds another triangle nose, but instead of a flat line for the bottom, it’s curved upwards. The mouth of Niall’s consists of harsh zigzag lines on top and bottom, connected at a certain point to make a mouth that Liam call’s a monster.
They set them outside on the front porch in a neat little row from biggest to smallest, and Zayn promises that he’ll light a candle inside all of them on Halloween.
~~~
The 31st of October
“Everyone line up in front of the window for a picture in their costumes,” Louis instructs, waving his arms around while Zayn tries to fix the hat on Liam’s head.
He looks adorable in his costume, even cuter clutching his woody doll to his chest with the cheesiest smile on his face as he poses for Louis’ picture. Harry’s got his hood pulled down low so the tip of it is rest right at his eyes, but Zayn can’t miss the unmistakable grin on his face.
“Daddy, are we done yet?” Niall asks, picking up his candy basket that looks like a soccer ball. “I’m ready to get candy.”
“Yeah,” Harry shouts, grabbing his pumpkin one, his in purple and Liam’s in green. “Poppy, you look very scary like that.”
It’s the fourth time that he’s commented on the face paint Louis did on him, the black around his eyes and the heavy arch of his eyebrows all over porcelain white and a faint blush around his mouth and cheeks. If he had known that Louis was going to do something that scared both Liam and Harry, he would have painted Louis’ face with more than just white with a black star over his eye and a black eyebrow over the other. Louis hasn’t been called scary all night.
Zayn fixes Louis with a look at Harry’s words and his husband just shrugs unapologetically. “Hey, you said that I could do whatever I wanted.”
“I guess should have known better, huh?” Zayn says, grabbing Louis’ hand and following his children as they begin to walk through their neighborhood on a search for candy.
“You really should know me better by now. We’ve been married for months now.”
Zayn turns to him and smiles, because it never fails to make his stomach flutter when he’s reminded that they’re married for real, not a lie that Louis made up. It’s real, the silver band on his finger gleaming in the setting sun a heavy reminder of the vows they exchanged.
“I do know you better, which is why I should have known you’d make me look like some kind of creepy serial killer from a Rob Zombie movie or something.”
“You look kind of sexy,” Louis says, winking at Zayn. “I’ll help you wash it off later.”
“You don’t,” Zayn teases, laughing when Louis looks offended. He leans over and kisses him, not caring if their face paints will mix together. “It’s not the star over your eye, love, it’s probably the bats on your shirt.”
“Liam picked it out.”
Zayn nods. “I’m surprised, he doesn’t seem to like all the spookiness of Halloween.”
“Daddy, we got so much candy,” Harry shouts at them, breaking them from their conversation, reminding Zayn and Louis of the one thing that their kids really looked forward to getting this entire month.
Zayn sighs. “They’re going to be so difficult to put to bed.”
“Good thing this is only once a year, right?” Louis asks, nudging his nip against Zayn’s, his thumb brushing against his hand as they walk along the street, watching as their boys rush up to the door of the next house.
“Yeah, good thing,” Zayn says, turning to look at Louis with a smile.
