Not Happening

Chapter 10

On Sunday Zayn doesn't wake up to his alarm. On Sunday Zayn wakes to someone gently shaking his shoulders, while his face is pressed against the inside of a book, bending one of the pages. It takes him a long, disoriented moment to realize who he is, where he is, who's touching him.

"Zayn," Liam says softly. "Your alarm went off half an hour ago. I don't think you meant to fall asleep."

Zayn blearily looks up at him, and then he sneezes. It's the sneeze that wakes him up. He only just has time to cover his face before it happens, and it seems to rattle his entire brain, which feels like it weighs ten times the amount it had yesterday. Yesterday, when he'd fallen asleep in the middle of his work. He remembers shutting his eyes at four for just a second and-

"No," Zayn moans. "No, no-" His eyes cut to the alarm clock, reading the blinking 9:13. "I'm late. I'm fucking late. I need to-" He jumps up, pushing Liam out of the way as he gathers his things. "Fuck, how did I fall asleep?"

"You look exhausted," Liam says gently. He puts a hand on Zayn's shoulder, stilling him. "I think you should go back to bed."

"Go back to bed," Zayn repeats. "Yeah, sure, that's exactly what I'm going to do." He rolls his eyes and flits across the room, grabbing his bag. He stuffs everything inside it. "I don't have a choice. I know that you don't give a fuck about this shit, but some of us can't just coast by because we're good at throwing a ball or something. Some of us actually have to work, Liam, okay? I know it must be fucking awesome in your world where you can just sleep in all day and not do anything, but I can't-"

Liam gets back into his bed, pulls the blankets over himself, and turns his back to Zayn without a word.

Zayn hurries to pull a hat on over his horrible-looking hair, and then he's running out the door, not sparring a single look back at Liam. When he gets to the library he's breathless and sweating, even if it's freezing outside. He only has time to lift his hand in a short wave for Nancy before he's hurrying through the room, heading for the tables at the back.

The whole group is there already, bent over books and papers and the works. Zayn skids to a halt, bag slipping off his shoulder, and they all look up at him before the first one cracks, letting out a smothered laugh. And then they're all laughing, looking at him like he's crazy.

"Christ," one of them says. "Did you really try to do all that work last night?"

"We were joking, Zayn!" another one says. "No one actually expected you to do all that."

"We thought you'd realize," Lisa adds, the only one who looks a little guilty. "Didn't think you'd actually attempt it."

Zayn blinks at them. "W-what?"

"We have until next week," Lisa explains. "You realize that, right? Yesterday we were all just exchanging numbers, really. Talking about the outline of what we were going to do. No one's started anything yet. Today's meeting was going to focus on distributing the research work, and then Tuesday we're all going to meet up and pile it together."

Zayn just - "What? But I- I was up until four because-"

"Shit, he really did! He actually tried to do it."

Slowly, Zayn collapses in a seat. The other three continue laughing at his expensive, but Lisa pats his shoulder and gives him a wide-eyed, apologetic look. "It was just a joke," she says. "Sorry if we took it too far."

But they don't seem all that sorry, really. Zayn's just too fucking exhausted to get upset over it. So instead he sinks lower in his chair and tries to pay attention to everything they say. And as soon as he can, he leaves, not saying a goodbye to any of them.