Fragile Things

He was sitting alone in a booth jammed into a corner when he met her.

Niall was, for once, still on vacation and had recently come back from Ireland to find his fridge as empty as his stomach. Needless to say, he ended up at the nearest restaurant that was still open that late at night. He wasn't even sure half the food on the menu was edible, but he was hungry enough to eat anything at that point. In hindsight, that in itself was a bad idea.

Besides him, there were only a handful of people in the restaurant. One of them looked suspicious enough to drive Niall into the booth furthest away from him with his twitchy fingers and wandering eyes. The others were and old man and his wife, someone who might have been the cashier, and her.

Of course, it would be Niall Horan who would lose sleep over a waitress he exchanged a minimum amount of sentences with.

Thinking back on it, it was probably a mix between his fatigue and her eyes that probably did it. They were very pretty, her eyes, and that was probably why Niall even remembered her at all. He couldn't recall much beside that and the food poisoning he had the next day. Whatever it was that he had eaten had made him so sick that he couldn't stand the sight of food until he got better. It was that bad.

When he went back, it was a few days later and during the day. His waitress was a woman in her thirties whose eyes were neither very green nor very bright, and this time he paid without touching his food. He had felt oddly disappointed that she hadn't been there.

Niall didn't tell anyone about his green-eyed waitress for awhile, mainly because he couldn't even remember her name (he was sure she told him and he was also sure she had been wearing a name tag) and partly because it felt like this was something that was entirely his. He felt that if told anyone about it, what little he remembered he would forget.

But after he went back again, this time at night, and she wasn't there, he began to forget about the entire thing.

He told Liam, and it felt as though he were telling him about the weather, nothing strange at all. It became more like a dream than anything. The moment it became a watery memory, a washed out experience that was faded as old wallpaper, he stopped thinking about it altogether.

Things would not end there, as it happened.

He did see her again. There wouldn't be much of a story if he didn't, and this time it was because of Liam Payne. Niall was with him at some posh pet store advertising Orijen dog food and cat toys that were insanely expensive, looking for something for Liam's turtles.

And there she was, between aisles three and four, holding a bag of bird seeds in her arms.

Was it strange that he hadn't even remembered her hair colour? It was either black or brown-- he couldn't really tell-- and she had pulled it back in a high ponytail, away from her face. Niall could see her eyes though, which were both very green and very bright.

"Hi!" she said. She was waving at him enthusiastically and Niall almost died, having been caught staring like some creep. He waved back. It was a slow, hesitant movement, but it was better than nothing.

She walked towards him and smiled. "Is there something I can help you with?"

Niall was silent, unsure what to say when he noticed her apron. It was a bit big for her and a strange shade of orange that should have never been used with the store name brandished on its center. It was then that it hit him. She worked here.

He should have ate before he came here, Niall decided, that was probably why his brain kept malfunctioning.

"Oh," he started." My friend was lookin' for something for his turtles?"

She nodded her head and she signaled for him to follow her, leading him through a maize of aisle and animal products whose uses were unknown to him. "Do you know what he needed?"

"No," he scratched his neck. Niall had not actually bothered to ask Liam what it was he needed in the first place, and at some point had lost sight of Liam himself. "But he should be around here, so..."

Niall was, if anything, terribly smooth.

"--Didn't you work at Julie's?" The words were out before he could stop them. It wasn't his fault, not really. Her eyes were unnerving him and Niall was reminded of Harry for a moment, but he quickly pushed it aside. Thinking of Harry and her at the same time was weird.

The brunette blinked before she smiled. She nodded.

"Um, yeah, I did. I'm sorry if you ate that food. Just about everything on the menu tastes like various degrees of awful."

"I was sick the next day," he admitted. He watched her grimace and felt a smile forming on his lips. "I'm Niall, by the way."

"M'name's Daisy."



Niall liked kissing Daisy Eastwood the best.

Her hands were a little rough and her lips were always chapped, but she smelled like flowers and had the ability to steal pieces of his mind for herself as he tangled his hands in her hair. She would often smile as their mouths met, their breathing intermingling. It was as if she laughing at the moment, at him, at everything, and it was so intoxicating that Niall found laughter tumbling out of his lips as well.

Before he knew it, Daisy had carved a cavity in his chest and labeled it mine.

"Tell me something."

Niall wasn't sure why he said it. Perhaps it was because she was always asking him things about his life: what his favourite month was, what he had done that week. Why he sang. It was as if she was trying to memorize the little details that made him Niall, yet he hardly knew what made her Daisy.

It wasn't that she didn't answer his questions when he asked, she always did. It was more that he felt that he was asking all the wrong questions.

In the time he had known her, Daisy had flown from job to job as easily as a teenage girl changed clothes. She liked meeting people, she said when he asked her why it was she never stuck with anything. But Niall felt like that wasn't it. It was like... Daisy didn't know who she was, what she wanted herself. That was a foreign thought to Niall, whose life had been spent chasing after stars until he had finally caught his dreams it in between his palms.

"My mum's allergic to almost everything in existence," she said finally.

They were sitting in her small garden, the summer wind swaying her flowers in a slow dance. Daisy had her head against his shoulder and her breath tickled his neck. In her lap was a group of asters that she was slowly weaving into a crown, linking them together as one would a very fragile chain.

"It was sad because she loved just about everything, so she kept pictures of them instead." Daisy continued. "We had a room in our house filled with photos, flowers pressed in frames. We would write the descriptions together."

"Like what?" Niall rubbed his nose against her cheek. He kissed her neck.

Daisy waved him off and blew a hair out of her face, a roguish grin on her face. "You're distracting me from my story-telling, you silly boy."

"Um, as I was saying," she cleared her throat and made it a point to pout. "We mainly wrote stuff from encyclopedias and magazines, but something we would write something a bit personal. You know, Daisy saw this when she twelve, on March something something. That sort of thing."

She paused and untangled a part of her crown, careful not to break it. The sun was warm on their skin and Niall could feel himself being slowly lulled to sleep by the sound of her voice.

"Dad would buy Mum fake bouquets all the time because she couldn't have the real thing. She would throw them out, after some time, because flowers only live so long and she said that if you're going to pretend, you have to go through with it all the way."

Niall shifted and let his his head rest on Daisy's lap. She ran a hand through his hair, kissing his nose when she saw his eyes begin to flutter shut. His breathing was very soft.

"There was one flower she wasn't allergic to, though."

"What was it?" Niall mumbled.

She held the crown of flowers up in her hands and placed it on his head.

"Asteraceae," she said with a smile. "Daisies."



Inevitably, he went on tour.

Daisy made it a point to send him a photo of everyday with a little description because she was possibly one of the worst people to hold a conversation with over text messages and telephone calls. We can do it too, make a room of pictures in your heart, she had said after she sent the first one. But the aching in his chest still hurt late at night when he called her and she was too sleepy to say much or even try to. Niall didn't think he would miss her this much.

He began to pour sand in clear bottles and labeled them with things like 'Wellington, New Zealand,' and 'Sidney, Australia.' He stored them in a wooden box and slowly they began to gather, a small army of glass. Niall wasn't sure why he did it, but he was never really sure of anything these days. He would simply take one out and hold it in his palm, and he would remember that girl with easy smiles and bright green eyes like summer. It made it easier, sometimes.

After all, their distance was measured in sand and photographs.

"I see you all the time," he told her. Skype dates were rare with her work schedule and his. "The weirdest things remind me of you."

Her computer's camera was grainy and she was wearing her work uniform, one he didn't recognize. As always, she smiled. "Really now?"

"Yeah," he said.

"It's okay, you know. I miss you too." Daisy looked at him long and hard, and he wondered what she saw. "However, all the long-distance calls are bleeding my wallet dry. Not good."

He laughed. "New job?"

"Always. I now work at a nursery near Julie's, can you believe it? I actually like it." she admits. "I'm thinking bout going back to school, become a botanist or something and be a hippie for the rest of my life."

Niall smiled because this was Daisy who still made him nervous (just sometimes, mind you) and he could see her being a hippie, a dolphin trainer, anything and everything at all. You must realize this: love does funny things to your brain. Sometimes, when all you want to say is I love you, you realize that the words wont come and that's alright. The feeling is still there.

Later that night, after Niall finished talking to her, he put the last bottle in his wooden box, a certain one he named 'Sunrise, Florida', and sealed it tight with a picture placed inside.

Daisy recieved it a day before he came home.

She took the bottles out slowly, placing them around her in concentric circles in the middle of her small living room with its yellow coach and ridiculous cat clock. She counted them once, twice, and ran her fingers through the labels. There were 62 of them, one for each place he had been while he was away from her, exploring lands she only knew from pictures and encyclopedias. He was oddly thoughtful, she found herself thinking as she put them away.

Then she found it. The picture.

She met him at Heathrow even though there were screaming girls and it was so crowded she couldn't tell one person from the other. Niall didn't ask her if she opened his gift because he could already tell. Daisy Eastwood had never really been as complicated as he made her out to be, though it took him a while to notice. She just wanted to be happy and, ultimately, so did he.

Their wandering ended at Regent's Park underneath an old willow tree, their surroundings so unbelievably green that it was dizzying. The bark was soft against their backs and for long while neither one of them said anything at all, the sound of the fluttering leaves filling the air.

"You'll come back to me, if you go again?" she asked.

I love you.

Niall looked at her and leaned his forehead against hers. "For as long as you want me to."

I love you too.

She laughed and she cried and finally she smiled because this was them. Her smile and his eyes that were so blue that might as well been the sky; the tiny birthmark by her temple and the ones on his neck. They were blood and bone, a network of fragile things and together they were beautiful.

"Come with me, next time?" he murmured against her hair. "Even if just for a little bit."

Daisy took his hand in hers, their fingers tangling like vines, and the heat from his palm pooled beneath her skin.

"Okay."