Fading

Chapter Five

When Louis gets to the studio after first period there are a few other students tidying up their work stations and they all exclaim hello’s at him. The professor offers him a warm smile and follows him over to his station.

“Everything is coming along beautifully Louis,” she says, brushing her fingers along the knit of one of the dresses.

“Thanks Ms. Schinnour. I’ve found my male model,” Louis tells her, a little excitedly.

“Oh thank heavens, have you fit him yet?” she says.

“He’s supposed to be coming in this period,” he explains.

“Wonderful,” she beams, squeezing his shoulder gently, “I’ve got to go but I’ll see you in fourth.”

Louis says goodbye and begins gathering the things he’ll need to fit Harry. Louis is the only person allowed to be in the studio without supervision. It’s the smallest one on campus and Ms. Schinnour only uses it two periods out of the day for her first years. Outside of those periods Louis is allowed to use it whenever he needs.

The fashion degree program is extremely selective so the first year classes usually only have about twenty students and the number dwindles down to about ten by third year. There is a large studio specifically for the students to work in during their free time but while most of them thrive in the group work space, Louis always felt suffocated.

He won Ms. Schinnour over when he was just a first year because he’s always been so eager to learn and improve, so willing to accept criticism and use it to better himself. He’s been her pride and joy ever since and when she saw him struggling with all the chattering that is constant in the group studio she offered him the free space. She’s been nothing but kind to Louis and he credits her for keeping him going when he hits patches of feeling painfully uncreative and horribly self loathing, though he’d never admit the latter to anyone.

Eventually the last of the first years have gone and Louis is alone in the room, stripping the outfits off of the mannequins for when Harry arrives to try them on. He spent the better part of first period replaying his time with Harry over in his head. He is still surprised with how easy the conversation flowed, how freely his smiles came.

Liam is on the football team and he has tons of mates from that, Zayn has his friends that he skateboards with and his friends from his classes. Louis only has Liam and Zayn. He has tons of people that he’s friendly with, who he could call his friends if he wanted to, but he just doesn’t connect with people easily. It’s different with Harry though.

“Hey Lou,” comes the deep warm voice from the doorway.

Louis turns and smiles, “hey, thanks for coming,” he says.

“More than happy to,” Harry replies, coming over and dropping his backpack on the floor.

“Do you know you’ve got a slash of pen ink across you chin?” Louis asks causally, trying not to laugh.

Harry’s cheeks flush a lovely red colour as he begins rubbing vigorously at his chin, “I have a horrible habit of chewing the end of my pen and sometime I go for the wrong end by mistake, please don’t judge me,” he groans.

Louis laughs and shakes his head, “okay I wont. You’ve got it now, stop before you rub the skin off your chin.”

Harry grins at him sheepishly and rubs the back of his neck, “wonder how many people laughed at me while I was walking through the hall,” he laughs.

“Only a few I’m sure,” Louis says with a casual wave of his hand, “how was your class?”

“Boring,” Harry shrugs, “just Chem. What did you have?”