“So, your final exam work theme is ‘Imagination’. We’re pretty lucky this term, since ‘imagination’ could cover so much, so you should all come up with amazing ideas. For the rest of this double lesson, I want you to start making a thought shower and a collage of what ideas you could come up with for your own work on ‘imagination’.” Mrs Martins, the art teacher at the sixth form started to explain to the year twelve group, as they all sat around in double art on the following Thursday afternoon.
The windows and doors were all fully opened in the medium sized art room. The hot sun was pouring its golden rays into the room, filling it with stuffy heat that some of the other students found rather unbearable. The English sun had decided to make yet another appearance on that particular May afternoon. In a week it would be June, and that’s when the weather would really start getting hotter, this was almost like the sun, showing everyone what they were all going to be in for this summer.
The large pieces of finished and unfinished art that were stuck all around the room only seemed to make the room seem more smaller and stuffier. The cupboards around the room had racks and racks of materials like unopened paints, or pots of paintbrushes that were dying to be used. A huge cupboard dominated one end of the room, and it was full of bulging black sketchbooks, some that were owned by current students, while others that had been lying in the cupboard for years, their owners having left the sixth form years ago.
In the centre of the room was the long table, big enough and wide enough to fit the average six or seven students around it. The other few boys that were taking art were at one side of the table. A few were now working, mumbling ideas to one another. Others sat stretched back in their chairs, not really wanting to work in such heat conditions that had caused them to loosen up their school ties.
Zayn Malik was sat at the other end of the table. One of the big windows of the art room was directly facing him, and every so often a soft, yet cool breeze would blow onto him, cooling down his tanned skin as it blew over it. His chocolate brown eyes looked through his glasses and towards the large windows. The hooks that the window was hung on were old, and metal, and he observed how they tended to give off a quiet squeak everytime the breeze was strong enough to move the actual window. There were piles of books and paperwork which were laid right underneath the window, and everytime the breeze seemed to roll over them, it would ruffle over the papers, and Zayn couldn’t help but smile at the quiet shuffling noises that it produced.
The voices of the other students that were talking about possible ideas suddenly brought Zayn’s eyeline back down onto the two blank pages of his A3 sketchbook. Zayn’s sketchbook was just like his drawing book, but larger, and with more educated pieces of writing around his artwork, as well as his artwork being carried out along a particular theme. His school sketchbook was filled with page after page of artwork or all materials. Some pages even had the same still life drawings over and over again, but with lots of different materials, like oil pastels, or crayons. Zayn loved to make his sketchbook work as tactile as possible. He loved nothing more than washing his hands at the end of a lesson, and watching all the colourful paint marks slip from his fingertips and into the sink in a large swirl, that was almost like a water-based firework.
But, for once, Zayn’s mind was blank to any such colourful ideas that he could pair with imagination. Normally, Zayn’s imagination ruled over his life, whether he knew this or not, as most of the time it was extremely subconscious, but his mind felt like a blank slate. He chewed on his bottom lip, as his hands carefully turned the pencil that was inbetween his fingers. His drawing pencils meant everything to him, especially due to the fact that his Nana had brought him them for Christmas years ago, and he had looked after them and kept them in such a good condition ever since then. He kept them in size order, and made sure each one was sharpened well.
“Jesus,” A low sigh came from opposite the classroom, before a rubber suddenly made sharp contact into the centre of Zayn’s forehead. Zayn immediately flinched and jumped in his chair as his eyes flew up in fright to see what was going on around him. If anyone had been sat close enough to Zayn, they would have heard the small, kitten like mew fall from his lips.
“Malik!” One of the boys called, and Zayn looked around the room. His chocolate eyes landed on the boy that was calling over to him first. He had pitch-black hair and bright blue eyes. The boy’s eyebrows were stuck together in a frown, as the boy stared down at Zayn, and he seemed to be chewing slightly. Each time the boy’s jaw moved, a laughter line popped up and disappeared into his cheek.
Zayn then quickly peered around the classroom. The boy closest to the black haired boy was looking at Zayn as well, even though he was quiet, yet was wearing the same frown. The rest of the boys in the class hadn’t even bothered to look up, but Zayn now noticed that the teacher had left the room, most probably going to get some printing, or something along those lines. Zayn looked back at the blue eyed boy and swallowed quietly.
“About time…” The boy grumbled again. The boy that was sat next to him tutted. He was also watching Zayn, but he must have gotten bored as his brown eyes rolled around his eyelids, before he looked down at his sketchbook with a huff.
Zayn remained quiet, as the blue-eyed boy looked over to him, chewing lazily, a look of distain on his face. Zayn could only imagine that maybe he was chewing on gum, and he didn’t like the flavour of it, which was why he looked so unhappy.
“Would you pass me the scissors?” He demanded, dropping the pen that he was holding in his left hand. The blue coloured pen fell onto his sketchbook and Zayn’s eyes watched as the pen slowly rolled down the page, his brown eyes catching the make of the pen, before he looked back up at the blue eyed boy again.
A heavenly laugh seemed to echo from outside of the open doors of the art room, and Zayn looked up with a small smile. He recognised that laugh anywhere, and soon enough, his brown eyes were met with a pair of emerald green ones. Harry was walking past the room with a pile of textbooks in his hand. He was walking with one of his friends, who was chattering away so fast that his lips didn’t seem to touch when the words left his mouth. Harry’s brown curls bounced a little lazily, as he turned to look at Zayn for a moment. A small smile spread across Harry’s face, before he turned his face around once more, which meant it was too late for Zayn to smile wider at his only friend.
“Oi!”
Two hands came from nowhere and grabbed hold of each of Zayn’s blazer lapels. He squeaked a little, his face quickly turning around to see the blue-eyed boy’s face only inches away. Zayn flinched as the boy threw him off the blue stool that he had been sat on. The two hands let go as Zayn flew onto the floor, his back hitting the hard surface first, before the stool skidded and fell on top of him. It was only light, and Zayn had been thrown under heavier things, but it still hurt his small torso.
“All I wanted was the fucking scissors!” He spat, before the boy grabbed Zayn’s pencil tin in one of his large hands. His fingernails were trimmed, and there was a silver band going around the boy’s thumb. With a turn of his wrist, Zayn’s pencils fell from the tin, and one by one hit his chest, before bouncing off into his face or neck.
Zayn’s eyes were scrunched together, but when the loss of contact ended, he opened them again. He looked up to see the boy walking away, back to his side of the classroom, his fists clenched, and one of them was clenched around a pair of scissors. Zayn watched him for a moment before he shuffled up onto his bum, so that he was sitting up right. Another breeze passed around his hot body, and he looked around him at where all of his pencils had gone. One of the lead had broken from his favourite pencil, and Zayn reached over to it quietly, before he placed it back into the metal pencil tin.
Zayn carefully did this with all of his pencils. As the other boys in the class completely ignored what had just happened, either due to pure disinterest or to being too busy forming ideas for their artwork, Zayn sat on the cold, tiled floor. He brought his legs in front of him so that they were now crossed, and his fingertips slowly collected each of the pencils into his tin. He arranged them as he did so, his brown eyes looking over them all for any dents or scratches. There were only two that were damaged; both leads had been broken off. He placed them next to each other, and looked at them sadly.
“Mr Styles, can I help you?” Mrs Martins’ voice filled the room, and Zayn looked up suddenly. His green eyes watched as his art teacher walked into the room, giving Harry Styles a curious look as she did so.
Harry was now stood by the classroom door. One of his hands was clinging onto the side of the doorframe, his knuckles almost going white as he looked across the room. Zayn was too busy looking up at Harry with a wide smile and sparkling brown eyes to realise that Harry was sending a deathly glare across the classroom.
Mrs Martins rose an eyebrow as she looked over the curly haired boy, who was a head taller than her. He slowly looked away from the object of his glares, before he looked down at Zayn. Zayn’s smile seemed to brighten even more, but as Zayn was about to scramble up and pull Harry into the classroom to show he was welcome, Harry quickly looked away and backed out from the classroom.
“It’s fine.” Harry mumbled, before he looked to his feet. He gave one last green-eyed glance to Zayn, before he left. Zayn was too sucked into the beautiful emerald colours that were wrapped around Harry’s black pupils to realise how pained Harry looked before he left. Too pained, and too ashamed. But of course, it was all unnoticed by Zayn.
The boy scrambled back onto his stool and quickly grabbed one of his drawing pencils, before he put pencil to paper. His mind and hands were working double time, as he quickly sketched out the main thing that seemed to stick on his mind. The lead of the pencil scratched and shot across the paper, in complete submission to Zayn’s hand and mind.
“What have you thought of, Zayn?” Mrs Martins’ soft voice soon broke the concentration that Zayn had had on his drawing. He didn’t look up, he simply lifted up his pencil and wrote a small, but careful, ‘eyes’ on the top of the page, before he went back to the drawing. His mind was looking back to everytime he had ever seen Harry’s green eyes, and he closed his eyes for a moment to purely concentrate on them, before his pencil set off again.
“Well, they say that eyes are the gates to the imagination.” She spoke softly, before she patted his shoulder a little and walked back to her other students. He finally stopped drawing and watched her walk away, before he looked back down at his drawing.
After all of the drawings and sketches that he had ever done, this drawing of Harry’s eyes had never seemed more important to him. Zayn’s pencil may have been completely submissive towards his mind and his own imagination, but his heart was completely submissive to Harry Styles’ eyes.