Heroes of the Orange Skies

Part 15

“So, you’re the one who’s got our Lou all tied up in knots, eh?” Niall stares directly at Harry, yellow hair glinting in the harsh sun. A zebra brays somewhere to their left, and Louis knows that normally Niall would have his face pressed up against the bars of the zebra enclosure, but right now they’re standing by the little station where you can buy food to feed the goats with, and Niall is staring at Harry with a little line between his eyebrows and his hands on his hips.

Louis rolls his eyes. “Shut up, Niall, I’m not tied up in knots.”

Niall doesn’t even bother glancing at him. “Yes you are, Lou, you texted me the other day to wonder if Styles-Tomlinson was too long of a surname.”

Harry looks gleeful and Louis wants to punch Niall. “That’s a dirty lie, Horan.”

“It’s not. You said, and I quote, does Styles-Tomlinson sound good or do you think people will think less of me because my name comes second?”

Louis shakes his head and pokes some feed pellets through the bars to the goat that he has affectionately named Arthur. “Listen to Niall being a brat, Arthur, and remind yourself never to have an Irish friend.” The goat nods its head wildly, and Louis looks triumphantly over at Niall and Harry, but they’ve already walked away towards Liam and Zayn, who’re standing next to the giraffe enclosure, looking anything but interested in the giraffes. Instead Liam is staring at Zayn with something like awe, while Zayn shuffles his feet and say something with a small smile, hands in his pockets.

For some reason, Harry had woken up that day and decided that it was the perfect day to go to the zoo, and so Louis had dragged Zayn out of bed and gotten him to call Liam, and texted Niall, who was, of course, more than excited to go to the zoo. Apparently Niall goes to the zoo a lot, and when Louis asks him who he goes with, Niall just shrugs and says “mate, ya don’t need friends to look at the dolphins,”, which, retrospectively, was an odd thing to say, since their zoo doesn’t have dolphins. Louis assumes it was some sort of big metaphor for the transience of life. Or something.

He hurries over to the four boys; it’s probably not wise to leave Niall with Harry - any moment now, Niall will probably be telling embarrassing stories about Louis. As it is, when Louis reaches the other boys, Niall is in the middle of telling a story to a giggling Harry about the time when Louis was 13 and failed a spelling test and ran away from home for an entire four hours, hiding in Niall’s shed in his backyard because he wasn’t brave enough to actually buy a train ticket for the city.

The story, Louis thinks, is oddly still relevant to Louis’s feelings about life in general - wanting to do something big, and not being brave enough to.

“Alright, alright, enough embarrassing Louis time, lets go look at the pandas,” and at that, Niall’s face lights up and he whips out his map to see where the panda enclosure is. Louis thinks that by now Niall wouldn’t need a map, but maybe he’s enjoying his role as tour guide.

Later, the five boys are on a blanket on the hill by the Reptile house, enjoying peanut butter sandwiches prepared by Harry, who included bags of carrot sticks as if he was packing lunches for his children, when Niall pipes up with his mouth full of sticky peanut butter. Liam looks slightly askance at his lack of manners, but doesn’t say anything - clearly he doesn’t feel comfortable enough yet to tell Niall that he’s got peanut butter in his eyebrow. Louis and Zayn are just too much of dicks to alert him, and Harry probably hasn’t even noticed yet, preoccupied as he is with taking pictures of clouds with his phone. Dirty hipster.

“So, Harry, mate, you do anything cool? Go to school, have a job?” Niall’s chicken legs are taking up most of the blanket, so that the other boys are crowded to the edges, trying to stay off the hot and sticky grass.