Chapter Text
Life is hard when you’re a single parent. But somehow it feels just a teensy bit harder when you’re a single father. You don’t get the sympathetic smiles that you see women with children getting instead they look at you with a hint of a glare because they think you’re just getting your biweekly court appointed visits. Or there are the people that try to lecture you on the importance of finding your baby a mother because as they say it’s simply impossible for a child to grow up without a mother.
Liam has read countless books and articles on parenting and specifically those designed for the single parent. They walked him through the hard years of raising an infant by himself. Liam needs things set out in lists with instructions and diagrams so having a child that doesn’t come born with a set instructions has been…interesting.
Sometimes he considers joining a support group for single fathers so he can know that he’s not alone but his town really isn’t big enough and every time he mentions the thought his mother smiles fondly before shaking her head at him. She thinks the idea is silly because Liam is doing just fine.
And Liam agrees that so far, yeah, he is doing all right. Luckily enough he was graced by God to get the greatest baby to have ever been born.
Zayn is quiet and doesn’t fight the rules that have been laid out in their household. He’s only three but he likes to spend his time watching cartoons, coloring and drawing or attempting to read the giant stack of books Liam has for him lined along the bottom of the bookshelf in the living room. Zayn also enjoyed hours and hours of nap taking. If sleep was made for anyone it was Liam’s little boy. Any chance Zayn can get to close his eyes and curl up under a blanket with his stuffed bear, Fig, tucked under his arm he’ll take.
Liam always finds him sprawled out on the living room floor with his eyes closed and little snores floating through the air, or laid out on the couch sleeping. A couple times he’s found Zayn passed out on his potty chair in the bathroom with his head slumped forward and his chin pressed against his chest. A few other times he’s found Zayn curled in a ball under his bed. He’s always sleeping and sometimes Liam panics.
He’ll sneak into Zayn’s room and press his fingers against the boy’s pulse point to make sure it’s still there or he’ll put his hand under his sons nose to make sure air is still floating out. Most children fight with their parents when it comes to nap time but Zayn is always asking like clockwork if he can go and lie down. Its Liam that has to wake Zayn up every morning otherwise he’ll sleep until noon, demand a nap at three, and be passed out by eight.
Which despite how much of a frenzy it sends Liam into when his son has been asleep for too long it also means he has plenty of time to take care of the paper work for the grocery store.
Liam opened his own store seven months before Zayn was born and it had immediately taken off. It wasn’t his life dream to grow up and own a grocery store in the middle of a small town with a son and no wife. Liam had always envisioned himself meeting a girl and falling in love, getting married and having an abundance of children while he worked in an office somewhere.
But life has a funny way of working out in ways you never imagined.
~~~
Liam locks up the grocery store behind him as he flips the sign in the window to read closed.
It’s late Thursday evening and Thursdays are always miserable in the store. It’s coupon day and it always brings out the crazy mothers desperately looking for the sales in order to help them feed their family. They rush into the store in herds and it’s not the first Thursday that Liam has had to break up a fight in the canned food aisle. He almost never stays until close but it’s Thursday and all of his employees are unruly teenagers or crabby middle-aged woman who refuse to participate. Plus his recent hire is an unruly teenager with a bad attitude and a name that Liam can’t remember for the life of him. A new employee with raging hormones on top of crazy mothers demanding sales does not make for a good day.
Liam gets inside his car and makes his way over towards his mother’s house to pick up Zayn. He honestly doesn’t know what he’d do without the help of his mother on days like this. Thursday is the only day of the week that he can’t trust his employees to close shop. The one time he allowed it a boy named Stephen had ended up crying in the back room when a woman with expired coupons threw a fit.
But Liam’s mother had offered to pick Zayn up from daycare and keep her at his house on Thursdays since Liam can’t do it. She keeps him until eight when Liam shows up with tired eyes and a soft smile.
When he makes it to his mother’s he finds Zayn lying on the couch sleeping with his thumb in his mouth. It’s his bedtime and Liam’s mother says he’s been asleep for about an hour having been a bit cranky tonight. It doesn’t matter he’s in the middle of sleep because Zayn can always sense when Liam walks in the room so when Liam bends down to pick him up he’s not surprised to see Zayn smiling up at him with fluttering eyes and a dopey smile.
He adjusts Zayn in his arms and thanks his mother quietly. Zayn wraps his arms around Liam’s neck and mumbles a quiet, “Dada” into his skin.
“You smell like apples,” Liam replies as he carries Zayn out to the car.
“Nana give me a bath,” Zayn explains and he picks his head up to kiss Liam on the cheek.
Liam says a silent thank you to his mother for doing that so he doesn’t have to wake up earlier than intended to give Zayn one. A double thank you because Zayn is already in his pajamas and Liam won’t have to wake him up again when they get home in order to do it himself.
“So sleepy, Dada.”
“I know, baby, but we’re going to get you in the car and head home, all right?”
Zayn nods his head and allows Liam to buckle him into his car seat without a fight as his head drops to the side and immediately falls asleep. Liam laughs lightly as he presses Zayn’s bear under his arm and shuts the car door quietly.
He gets back into the car and glances at Zayn through the rear view mirror. He sympathizes with his son because Liam is also so very tired that he can feel it deep inside his bones.
He’s still not used to being a single father no matter how long it’s been, but he’ll do it for Zayn. He’ll work crazy coupon Thursdays if it means maintaining their comfortable and quiet life together.
~~~~~
The Tomlinson household has never been quiet and comfortable. They’re loud and spontaneous with just a dash of crazy.
Louis loves his two sons more than anything he reminds himself of that as he tries not to break down Harry’s door in order to make him turn off or turn down that god-awful music.
Louis doesn't remember being fifteen but he knows that he was definitely not as moody as his eldest son is. Fifteen years together and Harry is no longer the happy baby he used to be. His smile still lights up a room with dimples that make it even more adorable and his soft curls that Louis used to spend hours just carding fingers through still don his head. But hormones and teenage angst have wrapped themselves around his son and taken him hostage.
Niall however, his youngest son at the age of ten, is still at the point where he loves his father and lets him know it. But then again Niall loves everyone and everyone loves him. Louis prays everyday that Niall will skip over the fatherly teenage hatred and stick to loving him.
His children weren’t always like this nor was his house filled with angry rock music and a blonde shouting threats at the television while trying to watch a soccer match on the screen. No before it was filled with laughter and Disney soundtracks on loop with two dancing boys floating through the house on cloud nine. Their house was covered in pictures and arts and crafts the boys had done over the years. It still is but there haven’t been many recent additions since both boys are less interested in making things for their father and more interested in him making things for them.
But Louis reminds himself that these are the struggles he signed up for the day he decided to adopt Harry. Louis has never had luck with men and he was young and fresh out of college with an attitude that he was not going to die alone so he applied for adoption. Louis didn’t need a man in order to start a family. He was going to do it on his own.
And he has. Boyfriends have floated in and out of their house but no one ever wanted to stay. Not when you’re the single parent of two boys.
~~~
“Harry,” Louis shouts as he bangs on his sons bedroom door. “You have to leave for school in fifteen minutes. Turn off that music and get downstairs, now.”
Louis hears a ‘whatever’ shouted back at him before he makes his way down the hall towards Niall’s room and sees him flattening out his soccer jersey in the full-length mirror against the wall. “Are you almost ready?” Louis asks.
Niall nods his head. “I have a game tonight. Are you going to be able to come?”
“Yes, of course. Now get your book bag and meet me in the car in five minutes, okay?”
“Wait, dad?”
“What?” Louis says as he turns back around to face his son.
“Do you think Harry will come?” Niall asks he bites his lip with a hopeful expression.
“I don’t know, bub. He might have to work. I’ll talk to him.”
Louis gets the boys into the car only seven minutes late. Tomlinson’s are never on time. It’s a family curse that Louis thinks has been passed down through the generations.
He drops Niall off at the middle school with a wave and a shout of ‘I love you.’ Niall’s cheeks heat up and turn red as he ducks his head and runs away from the car. Louis sighs as he watches his son run off embarrassed because it used to never bother him. Before Niall would giggle like a mad man as he ran up the courtyard to his school shouting that he loved his father back. Now it was a hidden wave behind his back as he rushed off to find his friends.
Louis shakes his head as he puts the car in gear and makes his way towards the high school to drop Harry off. Or rather makes his way to the shopping center two blocks away from the high school so Harry can avoid the painfully embarrassing task of having his friends see his dad drop him off.
Louis pulls into the parking lot and watches Harry gather up his bag before making to step out of the car. Louis watches him go before he realizes that he never talked to Harry for Niall.
“Wait,” Louis shouts out the window at Harry’s retreating figure. “Harry, come back here.”
Harry looks over his shoulder and rolls his eyes before making his way back. “What? You’re going to make me late.”
“You’re already late so talking to me really doesn’t matter now does it?” Louis replies with a smirk. Harry rolls his eyes again. “Niall has a soccer game tonight and I think he would really like it if you could make it.”
“Can’t,” Harry says.
“Do you have to work?”
“No, but I’m going over to Nick’s tonight and I’m not cancelling my plans because short stuff has a soccer game.”
“You never asked if you go over to Nick’s house.”
Harry rolls his eyes, again, for the third time and Louis has to resist the urge to smack him upside the head. “Can I go over to Nick’s house after school, Dad?”
Louis pretends to think about it for a moment, with a finger pressed to his chin as he eyes to roof of the car. “Um…no. You’ll come home after school and we’ll eat dinner together as a family and then we’ll go to Niall’s game and support him as a family.”
“Whatever.” Harry says as he backs away from the vehicle and makes his way towards school with his headphones on and not even sparing a wave towards his father.
Louis shakes his head as he watches his son go because if he had known how hard life was raising two children on his own than maybe he would have listened to his mother when she ranted on about the importance of a two parent household.
It’s hard being a single parent, and sometimes Louis desperately wishes that he had someone around to help him.