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**
It all starts when Harry, on one of those lazy midmorning days where the sunlight just spills into the room, mentions something about how lucky they all are. It’s obvious he’s still drunk with sleep, wiping at his eyes tiredly and looking up at the others through his long curls. Louis automatically agrees, because that’s what Louis does, but the others just wait for him to continue.
“All of this, you know,” He says, waving his hands around at the hotel room wildly, “Is kind of special, not normal and we’re so lucky.”
Louis agrees again, although he already has done; and no ones’ sure if Louis is awake enough to process the thought he’s previously approved. This time, wiping his eyes too, Liam nods in agreement, a fond smile sliding along his lips, “Yeah,” he breaths out and nods again. “Imagine if any of this never happened, image if we were just regular lads again…” Liam lets the sentence hang there, and Louis picks up on it.
“Or image if we lost it all.” He murmurs, “There’s so many memories, and it’s been amazing, I don’t think I ever want to forget any of this.” Smiling he looks around at the rest of the lads, to Harry who may have fallen asleep again; it was too hard to see under those curls if his eyes were still open. Towards Liam who was glancing around too, drinking in the morning and smiling fondly at everything. His eyes dance towards Zayn, the sunlight is pouring in from the window behind the lad, who smiles also, nodding slowly.
“Yeah,” He adds, like it was a helpful agreement, “Let’s never forget any of this, ever.” There’s another murmur of group understanding, something like a pact being formed and Zayn’s own tired eyes glance over to Niall. The blonde’s suspiciously quiet, but there’s a look of calm happiness written over his features and their eyes meet. A tiny grin flickers over his small pink lips and Zayn knows that he agrees too.
**
They’re having a rare day off, lazily shopping through a large but yet quiet mall full of bustling people. It’s quiet to the extent that Zayn can hear his own footsteps if he’s listening closely, or if Louis isn’t dancing along, yelling excitedly when he sees a shop he likes. Liam’s letting himself be pulled along by the sparking energy in the air, and so does Harry, reluctantly.
Almost as if they’re one person the three of them go bounding off, scaring one poor old lady who didn’t seem them coming. They stop to help her, gathering up her dropped belongs and profusely muttering apologies. She looks a little astounded as the three canter off, but kind of happy too, and Zayn can hear the “nice boys..” drifting over towards him.
Now, he’s left with Niall.
Zayn turns, and the blonde’s disappeared, god knows where. Sighing, he walks onwards, a little disappointed that Niall’s gone and left him too. He was looking forward to just Niall time; he’s always looking forward to just Niall time. There’s barely a step taken, the soft thump of his rubber sole against the cold floor, when his sleeve is being tugged on and Niall’s there looking hopeful.
Barely hiding a sigh, Zayn lets Niall tug him over to the shop window that had him so fascinated. It’s an electronics store, nothing out of the ordinary or particularly special about it, but Niall looks enraptured; staring into the window like there’s the meaning to life, or at least a never ending plate of Nando’s, within. Zayn peers into the shop window too, eyes flitting over the various goods and shrugs like he’s unsure what Niall’s going on about.
And, without a single word, Niall looks up and points over a small camcorder and Zayn’s already got his wallet out, despite knowing that Niall’s perfectly capable of buying his own stuff. When Zayn buys it, the lady puts the slim black box into a small unmarked paper bag and Niall takes that bag everywhere with him, holding tightly to the shoelace-type material handle.
**
It’s only when Niall starts filming things, mostly trivial little moments like mucking around in the recording booth or whilst out for lunch, Zayn puts two and two together. The camcorder is sleek within Niall’s steady hands, contrasting nicely to those pale fingers and together they catch unrepeatable moments.
Niall carries the thing around like it’s essential for breathing. Sometimes when they’re cranky and tired the boys want to snatch the bloody device from Niall’s hands and throw it as far away as possible. But, most of the time, they know that he’s capturing moments he never wants to forget; creating timeless memories and keepsakes for them to look back later on and to reminisce about.
It gets to a point where it’s normal for the camcorder to be everywhere with them; like it’s not really a separate thing to Niall, maybe it’s a new hand. And honestly, no one really does mind. It captures things; important things;
It captures Harry’s smile, the way his dimples sit upon his face. It captures Liam’s eyes, caring as he watches Louis idiotically make a fool of himself, yet again. It captures Louis making a fool of himself, making faces and laughing. But most of all, it captures Zayn. Captures the light upon his cheekbones, the crinkle of his eyes as he laughs, the curl of his lips as he smiles.
There’s many moments that are spun together inside it; digitally framed forever and Niall looks incredibly pleased with himself, cradling the camcorder to himself. There’s mountains of video footage upon his laptop, and he treasures that also, protectively carrying it around with him everywhere and practically growling if someone tries to take it off him unwillingly.
“Are you ever going to do anything with those videos?” Louis asks one day, eyes focussed on the television as he stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth in concentration. Liam was beating him on FIFA again, and Niall was catching it all on tape as Harry cheered unconvincingly every so often and Zayn joined in when he felt like it.
“Like what?” Niall asks back, always trying to answer Louis with questions as it annoyed him, and Louis turned away from the game for a moment to glare before Zayn’s cry of ‘goal!’ dragged his attention back.
“I don’t know.” He said huffily, throwing the controller down and standing up to go sulk ungracefully because it wasn’t fair that Liam beat him again. “Just something more than hiding them away on your laptop; maybe you should share.”
Niall ponders it for a moment, and then nods, although Louis' already out the room.
**
There’s simply hours and hours of footage upon his laptop, and Niall sighs because he wished he thought of properly sorting the videos whilst he was putting them up. Thankfully, he had the mind to date everything, and so started at the beginning, glad that he had thought to bring some popcorn along with him to watch.
The screen flickered in front of him; shapes and colours and words moulding together as Zayn peers into the room, watching Niall smile as he relives various memories.
**
It’s late at night, sometime past half four so it’s actually the morning that Niall eventually finishes his videos. He rubs at his eyes tiredly, almost snuffling, into the too long sleeves and places his empty popcorn bowl down. Sleepily, he shuts the lid of his laptop, moving it to rest on the low coffee table and curled up onto the couch.
His dreams are like watching the videos again, over and over; picking out reoccurring themes. There’s moments and memories from everywhere, all mixing and swirling around in his head, dancing together like a tribal dance around a fire. They’re disturbing enough to make Niall thrash, trying to piece together a pattern his mind is coming up with; but it just keeps slipping away, away, away.
There’s a face, in every scene, but things are blurred, and Niall whimpers in frustration; trying to pick it out. His mind flickers through everything too quick, and he’s trying to slow it down, but he’s not in control of this dream. There’s suddenly an excuse of gentle warmth, like a hug or home cooking and it’s downright comforting. Things smooth out fairly quickly afterwards, and the dreams starts to drift away, leaving Niall’s mind to rest, even though he’s still frustrated as all hell to know what the pattern is.
When Niall wakes up, he’s in his own bed, wondering how he got there until he rolls towards that comforting warmth. Snuggling into Zayn’s arms, Niall tries to grasp the slowly fading dream; hoping to remember what had happened; it seemed so important.
**
It’s only as he’s watching the videos again, organising properly this time and deciding what to edit into a movie or something for the boys what the pattern that played in his mind was that night of the dream. It’s something so subtle, something he didn’t realise whilst filming, and he doesn’t know how he missed it, but it seems Zayn’s the star of this movie.
It can’t be deliberate, because Niall can’t remember just focusing on Zayn, so maybe his subconscious is yelling at him or something. Whatever the case, Niall’s smiling like an idiot as he fondly remembers the moments, grin tickling his lips as video-Zayn smiles too.
There’s footage of everyone, really, but there seems to be at least five times more of Zayn and it baffles Niall. How on earth did he manage such a thing?
But, thinking about that settles soft, lilting emotions fluttering in Niall’s stomach and it churns at the change, warmth dancing across his cheeks. It’s only light, a brief touch but yet Niall feels like he’s got a fever; he’s hot and cold at the same time. This reaction is so idiotic, he thinks, the way he’s reacting, but as he glances over to his laptop one more time; and all that’s playing is Zayn sleeping in the back of a car and there’s over an hour of just that. Blushing, Niall shuts the lid of his laptop hurriedly and jumps up, nervous and needing a walk.
**
Grinning like an idiot, Louis accidently knocks over the popcorn bowl as he reaches for it, earning himself several glares. Liam starts tidying up, because that’s what Liam just does, but Harry pushes him, a silent “Don’t, just forget about it for now.” And Niall makes sure they’re all ready and sitting as he presses the play button.
Settling back into Zayn, Niall doesn’t watch the DVD he’s made; he’s already seen it a million times as he was making it, there’s nothing new about it. Rather, he watches the reactions of the lads; smiling as Liam gets his fond look upon his face. He laughs as Louis practically claps in excitement and grins as Harry laughs.
It’s better than actually going to the cinema and it’s all memories, so the lads are relating and saying things like “Hey, I remember that!” Or “Dear, why’d you film that?” and Niall can’t help but feel like he’s really done something special here. Or at least he’s helped to remember something special, because this was always special.
Once it’s done; and they’ve relived memories from the past few months the lads crowd around Niall, smiling and hugging. There’s a tonne of praise; although half of it is at least mildly insulting, but Niall’s too happy to care. They liked it. They really liked it. And, there’s this sense of wonder and love and he just wants to hug all of them until his arms cramp. Doesn’t want to change of those memories, doesn’t want to change anything.
Only Zayn doesn’t quite get as enthusiastic as the others and Niall can’t help but feel a little disappointed; Zayn’s really the one this was made for –
Wait, Niall thinks, that’s not quite true – it’s for all the lads and he knows it. And then he grins as a though blossoms in his mind; there’s more footage of Zayn. There’s plenty of it, almost too much of it and that’s not so scary anymore, the soft, lulling feelings within not uncomfortable; just decidedly pleasant.
It’s a few lonely days later (Zayn’s taken to not spending much time with Niall; and it hurts) when the thought becomes real life and Niall hunts Zayn down, prepared to shove it in the boy’s face.
“You didn’t tell me what you thought of the ‘One Direction Memories DVD’ the other day.” Niall’s not normally one for demanding towards Zayn usually, but circumstances call for it and besides, Zayn’s been ignoring him.
“Yeah, amongst all that emotional sobbing from everyone, I did.” Zayn replies lazily, looking like he wants to walk away and Niall’s ready to yell at him.
“No use lying to me,” Niall smiles, and holds up a small case with the shiny new DVD within. “You didn’t say anything, and I don’t know why, but I want you to have this.” Holding the DVD out, Niall smiles again, but less condescending this time and cautiously Zayn takes it; frowning at it.
“It was really beautiful, Ni.” Zayn replies with a tiny smile, “But you didn’t need to give me a copy. I'm sure the share one is fine…” As Zayn tries off, Niall laughs and shakes his head.
“It’s not that.” He scoffs, “It’s something else. Something the lads haven’t seen. It’s just for you.” Smiling, Niall nods, turns around and walks off, leaving Zayn feeling a little like a jerk and he stares at the DVD in his hand.
Cautiously, Zayn treads over to his own bunk, opening up his laptop and puts in his earphones. He slips the DVD in and watches and unbeknown to him Niall sits in the bunk opposite, peeking through the curtain and smiling as Zayn smiles too.
**
Louis teases Zayn the next morning as the boy stumbles to breakfast, rubbing his eyes and nearly falling asleep on top of it. It’s no secret that he was on his laptop most of the night and wild theories spring about, but it’s mostly decided that he was watching porn. Niall points out that there was no moaning or groaning and therefore it couldn’t have been porn, there’s no point to it unless you get off, but Louis just tells him to stop ruining good theories. Harry comes up with some more ridiculous ones, and Liam just laughs at everything. It’s a raucous morning.
Half way through the ride to the first interview of the day Niall looks up to see Zayn smiling softly at him. Timidly, Niall smiles back, unsure what Zayn’s thinking and his stomach flutters a little when Zayn winks, a promise that they’ll talk later.
That said later doesn’t come until Niall’s about to pass out, curled up into his bunk when a warm body slips in beside him and spoons him from behind. Zayn’s breath is also warm, tracing the back of his ear and tickling the hairs on the back of his neck. Niall shuffles back into the warmth a little, enjoying the feeling of Zayn’s arms around him and he just hears Zayn whisper, lips pressed to Niall’s neck;
“There wasn’t so much of me, you know, in the group one. It hurt. But, it’s kind of not like that at all, isn’t it? And I'm really glad.”
Me too, Niall thinks, me too.