Take Care

Chapter 1

“Fifteen minutes left,” his professor informs the class.

“Come on, you can do this,” Harry mumbles to himself. The student rakes his fingers through his hair as he tries to finish the last question on the essay portion of the exam. Just one paragraph stands between him and the one week holiday he desperately needs.

Harry lifts his head from where it’s hanging between his shoulder to glimpse around the lecture hall. The majority of his class has already finished, quietly handed in their tests and left. He frowns as he realizes he’s the only person left in his row. Everyone else always brags about how easy this class is. His friend Liam was the one to convince him to take Handler's psych class, because apparently he administers “the easiest tests and gives little to no homework.” Liam lied. This is the most challenging class Harry has ever been in. There’s two assignments every week and the tests give him anxiety attacks. Fuck Liam.

Harry bites the inside of his cheek and urges himself to focus on the paper in front of him. The question wants him to explain how the pictures an eye sees can be sent to the brain and decoded. It’s something about the retina sending information pulses to the optic nerve, or is it something else, Harry doesn’t remember. Then whatever the heck the pulses are from is received by the brain. He has absolutely no idea how to even attempt to phrase that. They spent three classes on visual perception but Harry feels like he has absolutely no idea how anything works.

He supposes if he fails out of uni, his mum would get over it eventually. He could work at a shop or man the counter at Louis’ parlor.

Harry frowns as he thinks about Louis. He misses him and his warm cuddles. The way he plays with his hair and always lends Harry his fuzzy socks and jumpers when they’re apart. It would probably take Harry hours to gather every article of clothing from Louis that he has in his flat.

“Five minutes.”

Unbeknownst to Harry, his thumb slipped a few centimeters into his mouth as he buries his head between his shoulders and begins scribbling down an answer. He knows that he’s going to be docked points for lack of sentence structure and legibility, but some points are better than no points at all. And, surely, Dr. Handler will offer some sort of extra credit closer to finals because only teachers from Hell don’t.

“Times up,” the man in the front of the room roared, making Harry jump a little. The student realizes he’d been sucking on his thumb and blushes, looking around the room to make sure no one is staring at him. Thankfully nobody is.

He clears his throat and gathers his papers before standing up and swinging is bag on his shoulders. He hands his exam to the teaching assistant who thanks him and he leaves the lecture hall feeling a great amount of pressure being whisked off his shoulders.

He pulls out his phone and taps on Zayn’s name, quickly texting the man that he’s done.

Almost immediately his phone buzzes back with a reply.
-Okay baby. Almost done with this exam. Make sure you have all ur stuff and go to my office. Grab a snack too!

‘Easy, enough,’ Harry thinks to himself knowing that everything he would need, including his laptop, is stuffed in his bag. Zayn’s office is in the literature building, just across from the science building he’s in now.