Not Happening

Chapter 10

It isn't until he's back in his room, shutting his door behind himself that he cracks. He makes it to the bed, dropping his bag in the middle of the room as he goes, and then collapses onto it. He buries his head in his hands and tries to school the burning in his eyes, the lump in his throat. Fuck he feels like an idiot. Or maybe he's just so overtired that he's getting emotional. That happens, sometimes, but it doesn't really matter why it's happening. What matters is that it is happening. He's crying.

"Zayn."

"Not right now, Liam," Zayn pleads. "Just - make fun of me later, okay?"

Zayn's bed dips, and the next thing he knows, gentle hands are rubbing circles against his back. "What happened?"

He has no idea why he does it, but he finds himself uncovering his face and answering the question. "They just - they made me feel like an idiot."

Liam's expression smoothes out into an indifferent one. "Not fun when that happens, huh?"

Now Zayn's eyes are wet and red, his voice is thick with repressed tears, and guilt churns his stomach. "Liam, I'm-"

"Don't apologize when you don't mean it," Liam says roughly. He gets off the bed, and Zayn shivers, wishing those hands were still rubbing his back. "I have to- I need to go."

"Go where?"

"Anywhere but here," Liam says, barely audible, before he leaves the room.

Zayn stares at the closed door, trying to sort out how he feels. But he can't, and he's too tired, so he pulls his blankets in around him and prays for sleep to come before he can dwell on everything that's happened today.

~|~

The weeks leading up to the holidays are sort of stressful for everyone, even Liam, apparently. Harry has even taken to spending as much time in the library as Zayn, and they're not the only ones. It's more packed during the weeks leading up to exams and the holidays than it has been all year. Twice, even Louis slumps into a chair at their table, and on one single occasion, so does Liam.

Zayn and Liam also fuck. A lot. It's like they've just silently agreed to Liam's suggestion to hook up instead of fight, which isn't exactly a good idea. The bad thing (or maybe it's a good one, but Zayn refuses to think of it that way just yet) about it is that they both know how to push each other's buttons so easily. They know how to rile each other up, how to get the other going. And it's like they do it on purpose now. It's like they irritate each other just so they can have an excuse to rip each other's clothes off. Once it's because Zayn turns his pages too loudly as he reads; another time it's because Liam left the door unlocked. They're not even valid excuses, at this point. They just rip into each other for the dumbest things, and it inevitably ends with both of them sweating and panting and naked.

Which isn't exactly helping with Zayn's stress, because he spends more time naked with Liam than he can really afford to.

The only time that any of them seem to relax their shoulders, in fact, is in the art class. They move on from drawing to sculpting, and it's fun. It's ridiculous, too. Zayn leaves every day with clay caked under his fingernails, and even having Liam there doesn't bring him down. Not when he's the most helpless artist Zayn's ever met.

Drawing definitely wasn't Liam's thing, but neither is sculpting. It's almost comical, how bad he is. Only Zayn pities him, a little. And he finds himself offering to help with the sculpting, though he doesn't know why. Liam shows him what he's trying to do, and Zayn tries to show him what he does wrong.

Except Zayn is kind of helpless with the sculpting too, admittedly. "That looks worse than it did when I started," Liam teased one of the times Zayn tried to help. "What even is that?"

"You said it was supposed to be a squirrel," Zayn had argued. "It looks like a squirrel!"

"It looks like a penis," Louis had snickered. "And I would know, since I'm actually trying to sculpt a penis."

"Mine looks like a penis, too," Harry added. "But that's because it's supposed to be a banana."

"You've ruined my whole sculpture, Zayn," Liam joked. He'd pinched Zayn's side, too, and Zayn had squealed like a little girl before swatting his hand away.

"Look at them flirting," Louis had cooed. "Aw."

After that, Zayn stopped offering his help. And they eventually moved on from sculpting to painting. Unsurprisingly, Liam is just as terrible at painting as he was at everything else. Zayn, on the other hand, is great at painting. Well, not great. But he's better at it than everyone else sitting with him. Harry's bout of artistic talented is apparently limited to drawing; Louis had given up attempting to do good at any of this in the second week; Liam gets more paint on himself and the table than he does on his canvas, and what he does get on his canvas is just a mess. It sort of looks like a child did it, actually.

Before Zayn knows it, the art classes are coming to an end. In the last official class, the instructor stands at the front of the room and thanks them all for attending, and then explains what will happen next. "You have until Tuesday to complete a single showcase piece. You're free to use any of the mediums we've used in this class. On Tuesday morning we'll all meet here, each of you with your completed piece, and we'll set up a small gallery for everyone attending the Christmas party, which you all are invited to. Later in the evening, well give guests a chance to bid on your pieces. You're allowed to bid, as well, for any work that doesn't belong to you. Afterwards, the person whose piece brought in the most money will get a small prize. Any questions?"

Louis raises his hand, and she nods for him to go on. "What kind of prize are we talking here? Like money, or is it a five-dollar gift certificate for the school cafeteria?"

"That's a good question, Louis." She smiles brightly at all of them. "The prize will be two coupons for a free movie, popcorn, drink and candy at the local movie theatre, as well as a gift basket of goodies. Any other questions?"

A few people raise their hands, but Zayn tunes them out, too busy looking out the window. Snow falls in fat, wet flakes outside, and he smiles. He might hate the cold, and the winter, but he can't deny that it's pretty, the snow. As long as he's looking at it from the warmth of the indoors.

"Have you decided what you want to do?" Liam whispers to him.

Zayn blinks, pulling his gaze from the window. "Painting," he answers automatically. "I think."

"Painting of what?" Liam pushes.

Zayn thinks on it. He's had a vague idea for weeks, but he's not fully sure why. It's not even a good idea. It's so dumb, but he can't get it out of his head. "Our room, I think," he says, because he knows that he won't be able to do anything else. Not with the way it's been nagging at him since he first thought of it.

"Our room," Liam repeats. "Huh."

"What about you?"

Liam shrugs. "No idea," he says. "I'm sort of terrible at it all, you know? Either way it's going to be bad."

"You're not-" Liam gives him a pointed look, and he cuts himself off. "Okay, you're horrible."

Liam doesn't even look offended. He just shrugs and brushes it off, probably because they both know it's true, and there's no point arguing with that.

~|~