Not Happening

Chapter 11

On the Monday before the Christmas party, Zayn comes into their room to find it completely trashed. It's not like it had been that time the guys from the other team broke in and left silly string and shaving cream everywhere, though. It's a more controlled mess.

There's a lumpy clay thing on Liam's dresser. There are balls of bunched up paper thrown around the room. And there's newspaper covering every inch of the floor between the ends of their beds and the door. Newspaper that's topped with about ten different bottles of paint, three different paintbrushes, a single large canvas, and a defeated-looking Liam.

"What are you doing?" Zayn asks. "What did you do to our room?"

Liam looks up at him with wide brown eyes. "I can't do anything," he says. "I can't- I have to have this done by tomorrow and it's going to look like a five-year-old made it."

Zayn shuts the door, trying not to look as surprised as he feels. "You're still working on your piece for the show tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," Liam groans. "God, I'm so fucked."

"Um." Zayn picks his way through the room, past Liam's mess. He drops his bag on his bed and sits on the edge of it. "What are you trying to do, exactly?"

Liam sighs. He pushes a hand through his hair and gestures at his dresser. "I tried sculpting again, but that was - that's just not happening. So I tried drawing, but it's almost as bad. So now I'm on my last chance: painting. Only I was just as bad at painting as I was at everything else, if you remember."

"Vividly," Zayn admits.

Liam glares at him. "So now what am I supposed to do? I've got to get this done so it can dry, and I only have one chance. If I screw it up, I don't have another canvas."

Zayn chews the inside of his lip. His own piece for the show is in the art room, where he'd left it. It's been done for two days now, and he's sort of proud of it. Proud of the contrast he'd captured between his and Liam's sides of the room. The difference between Liam's wall, with the poster of Jessica Alba and shelf with the sports trophy and the football sitting on it. With his messy clothes hanging off the edge of his unmade bed, and his bright red comforter. Contrasting with Zayn's plain black comforter and his immaculately made bed. With Zayn's shelf of books and comics, and the lack of clothes left around.

And then, the focus of the painting, the desk. With Zayn's work on it, but one of Liam's shirts hanging off the back of the chair, which is pulled out and not neatly tucked in. He likes it, the way the desk is the only shared item in the whole room, and the way they both had their own ways of staking claim to it.

He hadn't struggled much with it, but Liam's clearly struggling with his own. "What are you trying to paint?" Zayn asks him.

Liam shrugs. "I don't know. Does it even matter? Remember when I tried to paint that bowl of fruit? It looked like I'd done it with my fingers."

It had. It was a bunch of lopsided, colourful blobs, all sitting inside of one big, colourful blob. It was the worst of the class, hands down, and Zayn had laughed at it until Liam flushed red, and then he'd stopped because he felt like an asshole. It hadn't looked at all like the bowl of fruit that Liam had used as inspiration, though. And he has a point; it had sort of looked like a child made it.

"Maybe that's your problem," Zayn says slowly. "Maybe it's because you're trying too hard to replicate something."

Liam makes a face. "So what do you suggest I do, then? Just wing it?"

"No." Zayn shakes his head and slides off the bed to sit beside Liam on the newspaper. "I just - it doesn't have to look like something, you know? You keep trying to draw or paint or make a specific thing, but art doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you just have to feel, you know? Just do it and not worry about the end product, and it might turn out a million times better if you do."